.^^RToFT^^f^rTjgv.
BS 112.65 1849
The apostolical acts and epistles
THE
APOSTOLICAL ACTS AND EPISTLES.
FROM THE PESCHITO.
WITH PR0LEG0]\1ENA.
vi
THE
/VPOSTOLICAL ACTS AND EPISTLES,
FROM THE PESCHITO, OR ANCIENT SYRIAC
TO WHICH ARE ADDED,
THE REMAINING EPISTLES,
AND
THE BOOK or REYELATIOK
AFTER A LATER SYRIAN TEXT :
TflANSLATED,
WITH PROLEGOMENA AND INDICES,
BY J. W. ETHERIDGE, M.A.,
DOCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY OP THE UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG, AND MEMBER OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF PARIS.
LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS.
V
MDCCCXLIX.
LONDON PRINTED Br JAMES NICHOLS, HOXTON-SQTTARE.
PREFACE,
The work here submitted completes the transla- tion of the Syriac New Testament^ begun in a former volume.* We may now compare the sacred text, as read in the Eastern churches for sixteen or seventeen centuries, with that which, during the same lapse of time, has been received in the West. The comparison of these independent witnesses will demonstrate the essential integrity and incorrupt preservation of the inspired documents of the Chris- tian dispensation.
For the seeming delay which has attended the publication of the volume, an apology is due to those friends who have inquired, from time to time, for its advertised appearance. But the minute attention required by the nature of the work itself, and the circumstance, that the only time in general which could be spared for the prosecution of it has been that of uncertain intervals in the course of regular professional duties, will sufficiently account for the slowness of its progress. The former volume, on the Gospels, was prepared during a residence on the Continent, when the greater part of his time was at the translator's own disposal ; but nearly all the present work has been accomplished amid the daily toils of the Christian ministry in London, and in hours which might, in some respects, have been
* The Syrian Churches; their early History, Liturgies, and Literature. With a literal Translation of the Four Gospels, from the Peschito, or Canon of holy Scripture in use among the oriental Christians from the earliest Times. London. Longmans^ 184C.
VI PREFACE.
advantageously spent in mental or bodily recreation, or repose.
At the tribunal of biblical criticism the writer respectfully prays for a kind, but impartial, judg- ment on the correctness or incorrectness of the translation. It is very proper for him to attest his own belief, that, through the adorable grace of God, he has been enabled to give a version in all essential respects a faithful representation of the Syriac Scriptures ; did he not believe so, he would not presume to ofiPer it : but that class of readers who, though intelligent students of the Bible, have not directed their attention to this branch of inquiry, will naturally look for a corroborative testimony to the correctness of such an estimate, that their confi- dence in the translation may be warranted by some competent authority. It is on this account, as well as with a view to the thankful adoption of any improvement which may be pointed out, that he would solicit this adjudication.
For the sake of rendering the work as complete as possible, there is added a translation of the Epistles and Book of Revelation, wanting in the Peschito Canon, from the more modern Syriac texts first edited by Dr. Pococke and Louis De Dieu, so as to comprise all the holy books which we receive as inspired New-Testament Scripture.
With regard to the Acts and Epistles, the edition which the translator has followed has been that of Schaaf, on account of its having long been a sort of textus receptus of the Syriac Testament throughout the theological world. This has been collated with others, as occasionally indicated in the margin. Notwithstanding the labours of learned men in this department since the time of Schaaf, we are yet in
PREFACE. Vll
want of a critical edition of the Peschito text both of the Old and New Testaments ; as likewise a uniform collection of the books of the Ilexaplar Syriac, and an edition of the Harkleian New Testa- ment, with such remains of the Philoxenian as may exist in the mss. brought home by the late Mr. Richj or among those with which the treasures of the British Museum have been amplified through the diligence of Archdeacon Tattam. On this sub- ject much interest has been awakened by the preface of the Kev. Mr. Cureton's edition of the Syrian Ignatius.
In this volume we have omitted the Rubrics of the oriental lessons from the body of the text, and given them in a separate collection or index at the end. Interspersed among the Scripture itself, as in the translation of the Gospels, such matters are con- fessedly out of place. This first index is followed by another, v*^hich is intended to facilitate the collation of any particular portion of the Eastern and Western Testaments.
For the prologues which introduce the translation little need be said. They will be received for what they are worth. The first part condenses a variety of information which would have been very accept- able to the writer himself several years ago, and which he presumes will be welcome to some who are now at the outset of their inquiries. In the second part we enter a more elevated and more spiritual region. It is good to be there ! Perhaps this section would not be useless in Bible classes and family readings, as well as in the cabinet of the solitary Christian.
January Istj 1849.
CONTENTS.
PROLEGOMENA.
PART I. ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.
Page.
I. Translations of the Old Testament into Greek.
The Septuagint 4
Version of Aquila 6
Version of Theodotion and of Symmachus — 7
Recension of Origen 7
Recension of Lucian and Hesychius 9
Graeco-Veneta 9
Tb 'Xa/xapeiTiKhu 10
II. Chaldaic and Samaritan Targums 10
III. The Scriptures in the Latin Language 16
IV. The Syriac Version.
Peschito 28
Philoxenian 32
Sy ro-Estrangelo 34
Karkaphensian 35
The Jerusalem Lectionary 36
V. The Scriptures in the Dialects of Egypt.
Coptic Version 37
Sahidic 38.
Bashmuric , 38
VI. The Bible in Ethiopic 40
VII. Older Persic Versions 42
VIII. Holy Scripture in Gothic 44
IX. The Armenian Bible 4g
X. The Georgian Bible 43
XI. The Scriptures in Sclavonic 49
XII. Arabic Versions *. 50
XIII. The Bible in Anglo-Saxon 52
CONTENTS. IX
Page. XIV. Relative value of the ancient Versions in the Department
of biblical Criticism 55
On the present Translation 59
PART II. SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES.
General Division of the Syriac Testament. The Gospels, Acts,
and Epistles 62
The Epistle to the Romans . 64
First Epistle to the Corinthians 75
Second Epistle to the Corinthians 84
Epistle to the Galatians 88
to the Ephesians 90
to the Philippians 92
to the Colossians 94
First Epistle to the Thessalonians 96
Second Epistle to the Thessalonians 97
First Epistle to Timothy 98
Second Epistle to Timothy 100
Epistle to Titus 102
Epistle to Philemon 103
Epistle to the Hebrews 104
Epistle of St. James 117
First Epistle of St. Peter 120
First Epistle of St. John 123
TRANSLATION OF THE APOSTOLICAL ACTS AND EPISTLES.
The Acts of the Apostles 1 35
Epistle to the Romans 221
First Epistle to the Corinthians 254
Second Epistle to the Corinthians 285
Epistle to the Galatians 30(1
Ephesians 317
Philippians 328
Colossians 336
First Epistle to the Thessalonians 344
Second Epistle to the Thessalonians 351
First Epistle to Timothy 355
Second Epistle to Timothy 364
Epistle to Titus 371
Philemon 375
— — — the Hebrews 377
X CONTENTS.
Page.
Epistle of St. James 404
First Epistle of St. Peter 412
First Epistle of St. John 421
THE REMAINING EPISTLES AND THE APOCALYPSE.
Introduction 431
Second Epistle of St. Peter 442
Second Epistle of St. John 448
Third Epistle of St. John 450
Epistle of St. Jude 452
The Revelation of St. John 455
INDICES.
I. Syrian Church Lectionary 496
II. Harmony of Syrian Lessons with the Textual Divisions
used in the West 503
PROLEGOMENA.
PART L ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE HOLY
SCRIPTURES- PART 11. SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLICAL EPISTLES.
PROLEGOMENA.
PART I.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.
What light is in the natural world, that the revelation of truth existing in the Bible is in the world of the human mind. Revelation does more indeed for the mind than light can do for the eye, since it brings to us an inward realization of God. He who believeth hath the witness in himself. To him the presence of the Bible is a demonstration of the divine goodness, as literal as that which the eye discerns in the sunbeams. He who at the beginning said, " Let there be light," has, by his Spirit's work in the scriptures, provided for the inner universe the perennial radiance of truth, and ** hath shined into our hearts, to give us the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ."
For the mind, then, to be without this revelation, is a privation infinitely worse than physical blindness. The bUnd cannot participate in the advantages of a thousand forms of enterprise, or the pleasure afforded by the mag- nificent scenes which the sun bathes with splendour, nor peruse the innumerable objects of interest presented by the transient spectacle of life ; but the soul, without the illumination of religion, suffers a gloom innate, desolate, and hopeless, because atheistic. If there be no light within, how great is the darkness ! The very faculty of
PROLEGOMENA.
knowing God for ever and ever is as yet abortive ; and immortality itself, instead of wearing a character of promise, threatens to be a frightful and immeasurable calamity.
The Bible reveals the way of salvation. It is employed by the Divine Spirit to convert and regenerate the sin- ner, (Psalm xix. 7 ; James i. 18 ; 1 Peter i. 23,) to build up the saint, (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17,) to console the afflicted, (Psalm cxix. 92,) to give victorious confidence in death ; (1 Cor. XV. 54 ;) and, while it tends to the sanctification of the church, (John xvii. 17,) is the ordained instrument to be employed in her evangelic agencies for the pacifi- cation and renovation of the world. (Phil. ii. 15, 16; Isai. xi. 9.)
All human beings have a right to the Bible. Our interest in it is universal. It is the gift of God to our race, the true charter of humanity. If man have a soul, and that soul need salvation, the book of life becomes indispensable to his welfare.
The Christian church has never appeared in a more legitimate or dignified position than when holding forth the light of revelation to the benighted millions of the earth ; nor, without a literal communication of the written word, can she worthily fulfil the commission intrusted to her, — of teaching all nations. God will have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth. The donation of the volume in which that truth is enshrined, must therefore be accordant with his will. All the com- munities of our race, endowed with intelligence, invested with the responsibilities of a probation for eternity, alike ruined by sin, redeemed by mercy, and living for the great future which is before us all, were made to possess, and ought to possess, those very oracles of the Holy One which have made the best of us wise unto salvation.
But, from the national distinctions which prevail, by
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 3
the divine appointment, among mankind, it is necessary, if revelation should be thus diffused, that the documents in which it was originally given be faithfully rendered into the various languages of the world. That such a pro- cedure is in agreement with the divine will, is evident as well from the nature of the case, as from the practice of the inspired apostles and evangelists in quoting the scrip- tures of the Old Testament indifferently from the original Hebrew, or from the Greek version of the Seventy, — a practice which gives a plain recognition of the principle of vernacular translations. The efforts which have been put forth by individuals or communities for the mani- festation of the word of God through such mediums, would form, could they be set forth to the eye, one of the most profitable chapters in the universal history of the church. The few pages of the present introduction which can be given to the subject, will be devoted to a short account of the origin and character of the biblical versions which appeared in ages long passed away : the object in such an exposition being to set before the gene- ral reader the elements necessary for a proper judgment on the comparative merits of these works, so as to make evident the peculiar excellence and value of the particular version which was in such early use in the Syrian churches ; and a faithful dehneation of which, in the English language, has been attempted in this and a preceding volume.
It will be proper in such a review to notice, first of all, the translation previously referred to as in use, in a limited way, both among Jews and Gentiles, a consider- able time before the evangelic epoch, and which forms the basis of several Christian versions of different parts of of the Old-Testament scriptures.
B :.'
PROLEGOMENA.
I. TRANSLATIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT INTO
GREEK.
1. 1. The Septuagint. — The Hellenistic version of the Old Testament, commonly known by this name, is the most ancient of all biblical translations. The name, "Septuagint," may have been adopted to express the approval of it by the Jewish Sanhedrin, (an opinion maintained by Father Simon and Dr. Adam Clarke,) or may have been given it in accordance with the old tradition of the number of men employed in the work itself.
2. Without dilating on the difficulties by which the early history of this version has been perplexed, it appears evident, by the quotations of it in the New Testament,, that, in the time of the evangelists and apostles, the greater part, if not all, of the Jewish canonical scriptures existed in the Greek language. Next, in the prologue of the apocryphal book of Jesus the Son of Sirach, we find the author affirming that in his time, b.c. 132, " the law and the prophets, and the rest of the books," were extant in a Greek translation. Finally, a still earlier reference occurs in a fragment of Aristobulus, a Jewish commen- tator * on the Pentateuch, who lived in the time of Ptolemy Philometer, b.c. 146. In this passage, which is preserved in the Evangelical Preparation of Eusebius, and in the Stromata of St. Clement, Aristobulus (in pointing out the source from which some of the most eminent Gentile philosophers had derived their know- ledge) affirms, that " the entire law had been first ren- dered into Greek under Ptolemy Philadelphus." That monarch, who had succeeded to the throne b.c. 285,
* In 2 Mace. i. 10, he is described as being of the " anointed race of the priesthood, and preceptor to Ptolemy the king."
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 5
completed the institutions of learning in Alexandria, begun by his father Soter, and placed among the seven hundred thousand manuscripts of the library a copy of the Jewish law. But, whether by this term we are to understand the entire Hebrew scriptures, or only the books of Moses, is a matter of debate. They seem to have the more correct idea who take the latter view.
Such is the amount of what is now really known on the original history of the Septuagint. The legendary statements of Aristseus and others, of the employment by the Egyptian king of seventy-two Jews, six of each tribe, for the accomplishment of this work ; and how *' each of these translated the whole of the sacred books while con- fined in separate cells in the island of Pharos ; but was so over-ruled by the Divine Spirit, as that not only every species of error was prevented, but the seventy-two copies, when compared, were found to be precisely alike in words, and even letters ;" — these accounts, I say, have been long ago exploded as worthless tales. The authenticity of the passage of Aristobulus being admitted, — and this is consi- dered well established, — there is no ground for doubt as to the fact that the Pentateuch, at least, was rendered into Greek more than two hundred and eighty years before the Christian era. And this might have led the way, in the same or the following reign, to the trans- lation of several or of all the remaining books of the sacred canon.
3. The authors of this work were probably Jews of Alexandria. For though the genius of the interpretation which reigns in the Septuagint is Palestinian, and indi- cative of a free consent with the authorized or traditional exegesis, the nomenclature and terminology employed are such as, in some instances, neither arose from, nor were adapted to, the manner of speaking in the home domain of Judaism, but to that in use among the Graeco-Egyptian
b PROLEGOMENA.
scholars of the day. The dialect is Alexandrine^ and the style of translation diffuse rather than literal.
4. The different portions of the work, bearing internal evidence of a plurality of authorship, exhibit various degrees of ability. The Pentateuch and Book of Pro- verbs are considered the best accomplished ; but the his- torical books have not met with exact translators. He who laboured on the poetical books, is thought to have been more familiar with the magnificent diction of the tragedians, than with the recondite Hebrew of Job or the Psalms. In like manner Isaiah, among the prophets, is not happily rendered, though the version of Jeremiah and of Ezekiel has been commended. The translation of Daniel falls below the general merits of the work, and is consi- dered by Michaelis and others to have been done subse- quently to the apostolic age.
5. The Septuagint has been more or less esteemed by the Jews, but never obtained a full canonical authority among them. It is disputable whether it was read pub- licly in the synagogue, even at Alexandria. The public reading of the scriptures appears to have been invariably in the original ; and, after the promulgation of the gos- pel, the private value attached by the Israelites to the Greek version was materially diminished, by the influence of dislike to the Christians, who recognised its full autho- rity, and used it with a disagreeable effectiveness in argu- ing with their Hebrew opponents.
II. AauiLA. — It was this state of feeling, perhaps, which led Aquila, or Akylas, a Jewish proselyte of Pon- tus, to undertake a new and literal translation of the Old Testament into Greek, which he finished about the twelfth year of Adrian, a.d. 128. He accomplished this task in an able and, generally speaking, impartial manner ; though he has been accused of giving some of the Messi-
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. /
anic passages a polemic tendency adverse to the gospel.''' This version is useful in identifying some readings set aside by later translators, with the Masoretic text of that early period.
III. Theodotion, an Ebionite of Ephesus, in the latter half of the second century, published also a Greek version of the Old Testament ; or rather, more strictly speaking, a revised edition of the Septuagint. But his qualifications for such a work have not been deemed incontestable. The fragments which are yet extant betray an incompetent knowledge of Hebrew. Yet his transla- tion of Daniel was a decided improvement on that found in the old Seventy.
IV. Symmachus. — About a.d. 200, Symmachus, like- wise an Ebionite, and a man of great influence in that sect, (who were latterly called after him, Symmachians,) accomplished a fourth version, or metaphrase, which is said to have been perspicuous in style, and capable of affording considerable advantage to the interpreter.
V. Origen, surnamed the Adamantine. — This cele- brated scholar, when employed in researches for his Hex- apla Bible, discovered three other translations of the Old Testament into Greek. One, technically known as " the fifth," exhibited the Books of Moses and of the Kings, the Psalms, Canticles, and twelve minor prophets. The same Books, excepting the Kings, are given in the other version, called 'Uhe sixth ;" while the remaining one, or " seventh," comprised the Psalms and minor propbets.
* Quod apud Grcecos, post Septuaginta editionem jam Christi evangelio cornscante, Judasns Aquila, et Symmachus ac Theodotio, Judaizantes hareticij sunt recepii, (jui multa mysteria Sulvatoris siibdola interpretatione celarunt. — Hieron. Prcef. in Job,
8 PROLEGOMENA.
The authors of these versions are unknown. The sum of all that can be now known of the history of the produc- tions themselves, may be gathered from what Eusebius tells us in his notice on the labours of Origen,* who " learned the Hebrew tongue, and bought the authentic scriptures written in Hebrew characters which were extant among the Jews. And he inquired after other editions of translators besides the Seventy, and he sought out some other versions besides those common ones of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, different from them, which he, having searched out, first brought to light from I know not what corners, they having been a long time forgotten, and concerning which, being uncertain who were the authors, he only noted that one of them was found by him at Nicopolis, near Actium, and another at some other place. Moreover, in his Hexapla of the Psalms, after those four excellent editions, he adds not only a fifth and sixth, but also a seventh, version ; and upon one of them again he has noted that it was found at Jericho, in a cask, in the time of Antoninus the son of Severus."
These were the materials of that glorious monument of biblical labour, the Hexapla, and which, when complete, comprised no less than fifty volumes. It perished in the same flames which consumed the other treasures of the Pamphilian library at Caesarea, at the taking of that city by the Saracens in the year 653.
In the accomplishment of his work Origen did not intermeddle with the text of the Seventy in the way of verbal emendation, except by the insertion of diacritical marks or indices, which systematically pointed out the relative value he entertained for particular readings.
By the diligence of Eusebius and his friend Pamphilus, the column of the Hexapla, containing the text of the * Eccles. Hist. lib. vi. cap. 16.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. V
Seventy thus critically marked, had been separately transcribed ; so that Origen's Septuagint text and indices survived the destruction which overtook the other parts of his great work. But repeated transcription, by the inadvertent or intermeddling copyists of after-days, mate- rially diminished the value of the work, in having ren- dered it difficult to identify the critical marks of Origen with certainty. The text in this state, together with such fragments of the other versions as could be ascer- tained, was edited in two folio volumes at Paris in 1713, under the superintendence of Montfaucon,* and after- wards by Bahrdt, in two volumes, 8vo. at Leipsic in 1769 and 1770.
VI. LuciAN and Hesychius. — Lucian, a presbyter of Antioch, who died as a martyr a.d. 312, pubhshed the Septuagint in an emended edition, which became so widely used as to obtain the name of the Koivrj, or Vul- gate Greek, and also AovKiocvsla, the Luciauian ; and a little time after him, an Egyptian bishop, Hesychius, succeeded in another recension. On the text of these last recensions, that of the leading printed editions, those, namely, of Aldus, Ximenes, in the Complutensian Polyglot, the Roman, and the Oxonian by Grabe, has been formed. Of these the Vatican, or Roman, is considered the preferable, and has been the basis of the valuable edition of Holmes and Parsons, at Oxford, 1798, 1827.
VII. Gr^co-Veneta. — There is a translation of some of the books of the Old Testament into Greek in the library of St. Mark at Venice, and distinguished on that account by the name of Grseco-Veneta. The author was probably a Levantine Jew, of the ninth century. He
* Ilexaplorum quts supersunty Versione ac Notis illuslralu, edidit JMontfalconius.
B 5
10 PROLEGOMENA.
translated closely. This codex was collated for Holmes's edition of the LXX. But the work itself may be obtained in print, the Pentateuch having been edited by Amnion, at Erlangen, in 1/90, 1791, and the other parts by Villoisin, in 1784, at Strasburg.
VIII. To ^a[j.upsiTixov. — The appellation of Samarei- tikon has been given to certain fragments of Greek text which are referred to largely in the scholia of the Roman edition of the LXX. They are parts of a version made on the text of the Hebrseo-Samaritan Pentateuch, and no longer extant. It appears, however, to have been known to Cyril of Alexandria, Jerome, and others of the early fathers.
The Greek translations now enumerated, and more especially the Septuagint, have greatly contributed to the critical emendation of the Hebrew scriptures, and to the interpretation of the New Testament itself. The best Lexicon for the study of them is that of Schleusner.*
II. CHALDAIC AND SAMARITAN TARGUMS.
I. The Chaldee Targumin are versions or para- phrases of various parts of the Old Testament into the Babylonian or East- Aramaic language, which superseded the vernacular use of Hebrew in Judea from the time of the captivity. The immigration of large numbers of Ara- means into Palestine, in place of the Israelites led into exile by Shalmanezer, (2 Kings xvii. 24,) and the subse- quent conquest of Judea by Nebuchadnezzar, (xxiv. I,) who garrisoned the country with his soldiers, (xxiv. 2,) and appointed his own courtiers to the public offices, (xxv. 22,) had long before introduced a new medium of communication adverse to the purity and continu- ance of the ancestral speech ; but, subsequently to the
* Novus Thesaurus Philologico-Criticus : sive Lexicon in LXX. et reliquos Interpretes Grcecos, ^c. 3 vols. 8vo.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 11
coming of tlie Jewish people from Babylon, of which the great mass of them were natives, habituated from childhood to the use of the Chaldee, the Hebrew of their forefathers fell into perfect desuetude, except as the lan- guage of literature and theology.
On the restoration of the institutes of divine worship and religious instruction at Jerusalem, under the ministry of Ezra, it became necessary under these circumstances to adopt, in the public assemblies, a systematic verbal interpretation of the Mosaic and prophetical writings, section by section, into the only language then spoken by the people at large. The priest, whose " lips kept knowledge," construed into Chaldee as he read from his Hebrew manuscript : or, as the Book of Nehemiah describes it, " w^hile the people stood in their place, the Levites read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." (Neh. viii. 7, 8.) In this process the scrip- ture read was the Hebrew text, which, when (methur- gam) interpreted or translated, became Targumu, this word merely signifying " a translation or paraphrase," by w^hich the sense of a document is freely or explicatively transferred from one language to another. On the establishment of the economy of the synagogue, which took place not long after, if not in the time of Ezra, the office of interpreter (turgeman or meturgeman) became distinct from that of reader.''' And in process of time these verbal interpretations, which at first were extempore, may have been prepared for the congregation in a written form, and a basis thus laid for the productions which, imder the name of Targumin, have held for many ages a distinguished place in the biblical literature of the Jews.
* A diehiis EsdrcB consueverunt habere interpretem qui populo id inter pretaretur quod Lector ex lege pcrleyit, ut ^cnsum verboium intelligeret. So 3Iaimonidi:s, Hilc. Tipliil. cap. xii.
12 PROLEGOMENA.
Of these the two which most properly answer to the idea of versions of scripture are those of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel. The first is confined to the Penta- teuch. Its author, Onkelos, Dlvp^lb^j according to good tradition,* hved in the time of HilJel the elder, that is, about forty years before Christ, under Hyrcanus. His work is deservedly valued as a piece of faithful and sound Bible translation.
The same praise may also be accorded in general to the other, on the prophets, by Jonathan the son of Uzziel. He is considered to have been contemporary with Onkelos ; and, writing before the subject had been obscured to the Jewish mind by the fatal prejudices of after-days, his interpretations of many of the passages which relate to the Messiah harmonize entirely with the theology of the Christian church. In the former prophets the character of the translation is simple and sufficiently literal ; but in the latter ones he indulges in the more free and allegorical tone of the rabbinical schools. The prophet Daniel is not translated, or at least not extant.
There are eight other Targums on different parts of the Old Testament ; but they are of later dates, and infe- rior to the two now noticed. They were either unwor- thily executed at first, or their text has been greatly debased. These are, that on the Pentateuch, by the Pseudo-Jonathan ; the Targum Yernshlemey^ of which only detached portions on the Pentateuch remain ; on the Ketubim, or Hagiographa, by R. Jose, surnamed the Blind ; on the Megilloth, or Ecclesiastes, Canticles, La- mentations, Ruth, and Esther ; three others on the his- tory of Esther, and one on the Books of Chronicles. The Targums have been printed, both separately by vari-
* R. AsAR, in Meor Enajim, cap. xlv. apud Walt oh. Prol. xii. 9.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 13
ous editors, and also embodied with Latin translations in the London, Antwerp, and Paris Polyglots.
n. Samaritan Version of the Pentateuch. — The history of the Samaritan people is too well known to detain us. They were originally a colony " from Baby- lon and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim," which settled at Shomeron or Samaria, after the deportation of the native Israelites by Shalmaneser, as related in 2 Kings xvii. Idolaters at the time of their establishment in the country, they were afterwards, and, as their perseverance evinced, sincerely, converted to the Hebrew monotheism. Yet their inter- course with the inhabitants of Judea, never cordial from the first, was soon broken up altogether ; while their opposition to the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem, and the subsequent erection of one of their own on Mount Gerizim, as a rival shrine to that on Moriah, ripened the growing dislike into confirmed and perpetual enmity. From that period the Samaritans, as if ashamed of their Heathenish extraction, seem to have cherished the ambition of being regarded as the genuine and only worthy descendants of the patriarchs, boasted of a high priesthood of the purest Aaronic descent, and of an adher- ence to the institutions of Moses more close than that of their neighbours of Jerusalem itself.
[So even in modern times when Ludolf, in the inscrip- tion of his letter to the Samaritans of Sichem, had called them Beni Schomron, sons or inhabitants of Schomeron, or Samaria, which had taken its name from Schemer, (1 Kings xvi. 24,) they disclaimed the name, afiirming in their reply, that they knew nothing of Schomeron ; and that they themselves were Beni Israel Schamerim, that is, Israelites, observers of the holy law.*]
* From schamaTj " to keep, observe,"
14 PROLEGOMENA.
But though their ritual and rehgious manners were in most respects conformed to the Judean, they rejected considerable portions of the Hebrew scriptures, but seem to have yielded full acquiescence to the canonical autho- rity of the Pentateuch alone. They have survived, though in an enfeebled and dwindling state, the vicissi- tudes of ages ; their principal, and indeed only, set- tlement is at Naplous, the ancient Sichem ; and, on cer- tain days in their ecclesiastical year, may they yet be seen in their white vestments ascending the heights of Gerizim to pray to the God of Israel, where their fathers worship- ped two thousand years ago.
The Samaritan Version of the Pentateuch must not be confounded with the Hebraeo- Samaritan Pentateuch itself. The latter is one of the most precious treasures of Old-Testament inspiration. They came into posses- sion of it probably not long after the time of their con- version from idolatry, and they have fulfilled a charge assigned them by Providence in watching over this record so as to keep in existence a text which would be a coun- terpart to the Judean copy, and a guarantee for the integrity of the Mosaic writings.*
[In their letter to Ludolf, the Samaritans of Sichem affirm their possession of a copy written in " the days of favour," yemey haratson, that is, the happy years which immediately followed the victories of Joshua, and the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan : the subscrip- tion at the end of this copy stating that it was " written by me, Abisa son of Phineas, son of Eleazar, son of
* " Let the variations on each side be carefully collected, and then critically examined by the context and the ancient versions. If the Samaritan copy be found in some places to correct the Hebrew, yet will the Hebrew in other places correct the Samaritan. Each copy, therefore, is invaluable ; each demands our pious veneration, and attentive study. The Pentateuch will never be understood perfectly till we admit the authority of both." — Kennicott, Diss. 2.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 15
Aaron the priest. I have "written it in the vestibule of the tabernacle of convocation, the thirteenth year after the entry of the sons of Israel into Canaan."]
Of this ancient text there have been, strictly speaking, three versions ; that into Greek, already noticed, and now inextant ; another into Arabic, which will be enumerated in its own place ; and a third, that properly called the Samaritan version, because made for the use of that peo- ple in their own vernacular, a dialect which with an Aramaic basis comprised a multitude of exotic words, Cuthite, Arabic, and Hebrew ; and such substantially has it continued, as appears by the epistles written by them in it, to Scaliger in 1582, and to Ludolf in 1686.
The Samaritan version is therefore a Targum, made after the same manner and in imitation of those in use among the Jews. It exhibits the five books of Moses in the national language. The style of the translator is free, yet not errant. He is explicative, and not parsimo- nious of glosses. He reduces tropical expressions to com- mon ones, and, in imitation of the Meimra de Yetja, the personal " word of the Lord," so continually found in the Chaldee paraphrasts, he often employs the designa- tion of Malak Alhah, " the angel of God," for the divine names of Jehovah and Elohim. If the version be so old as some critics would argue, who assign it as remote a day as the time of Esarhaddon, the text has been inter- polated from the Jewish Targums ; but the greater pro- bability seems on the side of those who, as Eichhorn, consider it to be a later production than that of Onkelos. In the Polyglots the Samaritan version, like the Penta- teuch, is printed in the older Hebrew character, that which was derived from the pen of Moses. The Penta- teuch has a Latin translation, but the version none ; but this defect is sufficiently supplied by the notification in the margin of those expressions in which the version departs from the biblical text.
16 PROLEGOMENA.
If, as we liave seen in the existence of the Septuagint, as well as the popular Targums, the Judaic church had even in our Lord's time proved itself to be friendly to the beneficent idea of vernacular translations of the inspired writings, it may be easily presumed that the Christian church, whose commission extended to the evangelization of the whole world, would speedily apply its energies to this department of enterprise. Accordingly we find Eusebius so early as the fourth century (a.d. 315) afiirm- ing, that the scriptures were then '^ translated into all languages, both of Greeks and barbarians, throughout the world, and studied by all nations as the oracles of God:" * while Chrysostom (a.d. 398) reminds his hear- ers that " the Syrians, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, Ethiopians, and a multitude of other nations, had trans- lated them into their own tongues, by which barbarians learned to be philosophers, and women and children were enabled to imbibe with ease the doctrine of the gospel." f So also Theodoret, (a.d. 423,) that " every nation under heaven had the scripture in their own tongue : the He- brew books were not only rendered into Greek, but into the Roman, Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Armenian, Scy- thian, and Sauromatic languages ; and, in a word, into all tongues used by all nations in his time." J And to the same effect St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and others. § We proceed to offer an outline of the principal facts relating to these primitive Christian versions.
III. THE SCRIPTURES IN THE LATIN LANGUAGE.
MosHEiM, in his *^ Commentaries " on the affairs of the church in the second century, says that "the anxious desire felt by the Christians of that age to inform the
* De FrcBpar. Evang. lib. xii. cap. 1 . -|- Horn. ii. in Joan.
+ Theod. 0pp. torn. iv. p. 555. Ed. Paris, 1642. § Bingham, "Antiq." vol. iv. cap. 4.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 17
minds of the multitude, and to lead them to Christ, by furnishing them with those writings in which the plan of salvation through him is laid open, and the industry with which this object was pursued by men of every descrip- tion, cannot be better understood than from the great number of Latin translations of the sacred volume which were set forth even in the very infancy of Christianity. For, as the Latin language had been rendered familiar to a great part of the world, and was not entirely unknown even to what were called the barbarous nations, the Christians conceived that, by their translating the books of the New Testament into it, the way of truth would at once be laid open to an innumerable portion of man- kind." But these primseval translations cannot now be identified ; indeed the existence of any so early as the first century, in which it is thought sach attempts were probably made by Christians at Rome, of Jewish extrac- tion, is not capable of demonstration. But, unless the scripture texts in Tertullian, who wrote in the last decade of the second century, were renderings of his own from the Greek, we are certain there must have been a Latin version in current use so early as a.d. 190. In the time of Augustine, however, who was born in 354, we have evidence of the circulation of several versions in that language. In his treatise Of Christian Doctrine, a dis- course expressly intended to serve as an introduction to the reading and interpretation of the holy scriptures, after advising that, in addition to the attainment of a knowledge of the original languages, recourse should be had to the different versions of the Bible, inasmuch as one serves to illustrate another, he takes occasion to refer to the multitude of Latin translations then in current use ; but in such a way as to caution his readers against the greater number of them, as having been made by persons who were not sufficiently qualified for the under-
18 PROLEGOMENA.
taking. Qui scripturas ex Hebrcea lingua in Grcecam ver- terunt numerari possunt, Latini autem Interpretes nullo modo. Ut enim cuique pininis Jidei temporihus in manus venit codex Grcecus, et aliquantulum facultatis sibi utriiis- que linguae habere videbatur, ausus est interpretari.^ But in the same work be speaks in terms of great commenda- tion of one among these many versions, for the close- ness of its renderings, and the perspicuity of its style. This version he distinguishes by the name of the Itala. In ipsis autem inte?pretatiombus, Itala ceteris prcefe- ratur ; nam est verborum tenacior cum perspicuitate sententice.
As this sentence is the only place among all the writ- ings of the fathers in which mention is made of the Italic version, it is evident that the custom of modern critics in applying the name of " the Itala " to the whole mass of Latin biblical text prior to the time of St. Je- rome, is injudicious ; since it invests a large class of pro- ductions, of very different degrees of merit, with a cha- racter which is affirmed by Augustine respecting one of them only. And whether, indeed, among the ancient Latin translations which have come down to us, this par- ticular one is yet extant, is a question that cannot be determined with certainty. The African bishop gives no extracts from it, no specimen of the work whatever, and only mentions its existence in a solitary sentence. How, then, is it to be identified ? Nevertheless there is a strong opinion in favour of the text exhibited in the Codex BrixianuSy as being that referred to by Augustine, This celebrated manuscript of the Gospels was written eleven hundred years ago on purple veUum, the charac- ters traced in ink, and subsequently silvered, and the initial letters tinged with gold ; the work itself, from this latter circumstance, being commonly known as the Codex
♦ AuGUSTiNUS De Doct. Christ, lib. ii. cap. 11.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 19
Aureus."^ It is considered that this version took the name of Itala from the diocese in which it was in com- mon use, the Itahc, of which Milan was the metropolis. f The text of the manuscript of Brescia, (Cod. Bi-ixianus,) together with that of three others, the Verceil, Corbeil, and Verona, as well as the Codex Forojidiensis, a ms. of the later version of St. Jerome, was edited in 1749, by Joseph Blanchini, a priest of the Oratory, in four volumes folio, with the title, Evangeliarium quadruplex Latince Versiones antiqucB, sen veteris Italicce, nunc pri- mum ill Lucem editum, ex Codicibus Manuscriptis aureis^ argenteis, 2mrpureis, aliisque^ plusquam miUenarice ^ta- tisy sub Auspiciis Joannis V. Regis Jidelissimi Lusitanice.
[The manuscripts here first printed are described by Semler in the appendix to Wetstein's Prolegomena, pp. 635 — 6/8. But Griesbach has furnished more extensive information, in a catalogue of no less than seventeen codices. The Verceil manuscript (which is said to be an autograph of St. Eusebius, a bishop of that diocess in the fourth century) had been published at Milan in 1/43, by Jean Andre Irico. Before this, father Martianay, of the Benedictines of St. Maur, had edited an old Latin Gospel of St. Matthew, with the Epistle of St. James, in what he calls "the Italic version." But the most com- plete collection of the ancient Latin scriptures is that published at Rheims, by Sabbatier, entitled, Bibliorum sacrorum Latince Versiones antiquce, seu vetus Italica, et ceterce, qiiotquot in codicibus MSS. et antiquorum libris reperiri potuerunt, quce cum Vidgata Latina et cum textu
* St. Jerome notices manuscripts of this kind : Haheant qui vo- lunt veteres libros, vel in membranis purpureis auro argcnioqne de- scriptos, vel uncialibus, iit vulgo ajunt, litteris onera mayis exarata, qriam codices. — Prcef. in Job.
t Nolan "On the Greek Vulgate," Preface; Cave's "Go- vernment of Ancient Church," p. 127; Allix, "On the Church of Piedmont," chap. i.
20 PROLEGOMENA.
Grceco comparentur. Remis, 1 743. The text exhibited in these three folios is not printed from Latin manu- scripts only, but also from what are called the Codices Grceco-Latini, or manuscripts of the early and middle ages, which present both the original Greek and a Latin translation, the latter, in some cases, being very ancient. Such is the celebrated Codex Bezce at Cambridge, (the Gospels and the Acts,) a ms. of the fifth century ; the Codex Laudiani, No. 3, (the Acts,) in the Bodleian at Oxford ; and the Codex Boernerianus, in the Electoral Li- brary at Dresden, in which the Latin is interUned with the Greek text.]
In the Old Testament the ancient Latin follows the Septuagint in its ante-hexaplaric state, and must on that account have been liable to the errors which rendered the labours of Origen so serviceable. The Vetus Latina of the Old Testament may therefore be referred to in evi- dence for readings of the Seventy in the early part of the third century.
The different parts of the New Testament, as confess- edly translated from the original at a very early age, are of much use in the department of criticism, in pointing out the readings of Greek mss. of greater antiquity than any now in existence. It is admitted that many of the renderings may be far from faultless ; but we may never- theless consider the rule laid down by Bengel as suffi- ciently accurate, — that the co-incidence of the Latin versions with such a Greek manuscript as the Codex Alexandrinus, may be considered as an undeniable argu- ment for the authenticity of a reading. And the value of the old Latin becomes yet more apparent by the phe- nomenon, that the more ancient the Greek manuscripts, the closer is their agreement with it.
These translations are distinguished by a certain rude simplicity. They follow the idiom of the Hebraistic Greek
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 21
of the apostles and evangelists as by a connatural habit in the versionist, or by a systematic care. This plainness of style passes in numerous instances into grammatical inac- curacy. The authors, if native Italians, appear to have been accustomed to live at a distance from the great centres of civihzation, or, as Michaelis was fond of arguing, were Syrians, or Christianized Jews, who were among the most active agents of the gospel in the apostolic age at Rome. So early as the middle of the fourth century, the text of these primitive Latin versions had become much dete- riorated. As separate productions they were losing their individuality of character, by being mixed and mu- tually interpolated. A new text arose, which was a com- position of various parts of once distinct works, by the rejection of passages or phrases in a manuscript, which were supplied by parallel ones from another which seemed preferable ; as well as by the adoption into the text of what had before been merely marginal suggestions. In speaking of this state of things, St. Jerome says that no one copy resembled another ; and that, in fact, there were almost as many different texts as manuscripts.*
Eusebius, bishop of Yerceil, the friend of Athanasius, appears to have been the first to turn his energies to- wards the correction of this serious evil. He was prompted to the undertaking by Julius, who then presided over the church of Rome. We have in the Codex Vercel- lensis (printed separately by Irico, and incorporated in the magnificent work of Blanchini) the result of his labours on the text of the Gospels.
But for St. Jerome was reserved the honour of reno- vating the greater part of the Latin text. He, too, was stirred up to this herculean task by Damasus, at that time pope ; and he brought it to a conclusion about the year 384. He had then re-translated the canonical
* Si Latinis exemplaribus fides est adhibenda, respondeanty qui- bus 'i lot enim sunt exemplaria pcene quot codices.
22 PROLEGOMENA.
books of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, and re- vised those of the New by the best exemplars of the ori- ginal he could obtain, and by a sedulous collation of the ancient Latin copies among themselves. His object was not to create a new text, but to rectify the more consi- derable errors of that already extant ; and from which, as he says in his prefatory epistle to Damasus, he made it a rule not to depart more than was demanded by the sense.*
The recension thus accomplished by Jerome did not for a long time obtain general favour in the West ; and, even in Rome, so late as the time of St. Gregory in 590, was merely considered as of co-ordinate authority with the more ancient versions. In an epistle to Leander, bishop of Seville, Gregory says expressly, that at Rome they used both the old and the new. Sedes Apostolica, cui pi'cEsideo, utraque tra7islatione utitur. Yet in his own works he declares his personal preference of the new edition. Isidore, of Spain, also strongly recommended Jerome's work as more clear and trustworthy than the more ancient but confused versions ; and the great theolo- gians of the middle ages, Remigius, Bede, Rabanus, Bernard, Anselm, Peter Lombard, Albert, Aquinas, Bonaventura, and others, from one century to another, adopted it as their favourite standard of scripture. f
But the text, meantime, became subject to the same mutations which had interfered with the purity of the Vetus Latina. A custom introduced by Cassiodorus, (once a senator and minister to Theodoric, and afterwards an active president of a large monastery, and a zealous promoter of biblical studies,) of transcribing the version
* lis tantum qucB sensum videhantur mutare correctis. The cri- tics, however, have complained that he did not fully adhere to this principle. Vide Simon, Hist. Critique du N. T. torn. ii. 29, &c.; and Wet stein's Prolegomena, p. 83.
-j- Yet the Anglo-Saxon version (ninth century) was made from the old Latin.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 23
of Jerome in parallel columns with the old ones, for the sake of convenient comparison, led to those mutual cor- rections and alterations of the texts which confounded one with the other. The propensity of some of the monkish scribes f'* riui se sont mesles du mestier de cri- tiques "J for extempore emendations, and the unavoidable lapses of the pen, contributed to bring the Latin scrip- tures into sad deterioration. A specimen of this medi- aeval Vulgate is found in the richly ornate manuscript of St. Emeram at Ratisbon, which was executed under the patronage of Charles the Bald. In this work, which is written in golden letters and bound in gold, set with pearls and precious stones, the text (that of the gospels) is a melange of several, and differs greatly, on that account, both from the ancient and Hieronymian Latin.
The emperor Charlemagne, in his care for the prospe- rity of religion and learning, had been desirous of restrain- ing this tendency, and had made some efforts to provide the church with more correct exemplars ; * but the mea- sures he adopted were not of sufficient extent or effective- ness to remedy an evil which seems in that state of society to have been inevitable, till the advent of the more hopeful times which, with other auguries of good in store for the world, witnessed the development of that wonder-working art which gives an unlimited multiplication to the records of truth, and insures their incorruptible integrity.
* Mabillon, Annal. torn. i. p. 25; Theganus, De Gestis Lud. Pii, apud Duchesne, Scriptores Francici, torn. ii. p. 277. Among those who laboured subsequently in this department was Stephen, second abbot of Citeaux, who, in attempting a new revision, invited the assistance of some learned Jews, to enable him to prefer those readings in the Old Testament which were most conformed to the Hebrew. Some of the authors of the low ages made a sort of catalogues raisonnes of errata in the Latin scriptures, which they called Biblical Correclories. Dupin mentions two 3iss. of these, which, in his day, were in the library of the Sorbonne. Biblioth. des Aut. tom. xiv. p. 203.
24 PROLEGOMENA.
It was not till the early part of the sixteenth century that the Latin Vulgate received the attentions of a man who was both qualified as a scholar to do much towards restoring its textual purity, and, by the exercise of his art as a printer, to insure it a permanent character and status. This was Robert Etienne, or Stephens, of Paris, who exhibited successive editions in 1528, 1532, 1534, 1540, 1545, and 1546. That of 1540 is considered the best. The text of Stephens occasioned much discussion, and Hentenius published what was professedly an emended edition, in folio, at Louvain, in 1547; which was fol- lowed by another, or rather a reprint of the same, in 5 vols. 8vo., by the Plantins at Antwerp, in 1565 and 1574 ; and by that of Lucas Brugensis, at Louvain, in 3 vols. 8vo., 1573, and in 8vo. and 4to. in 1586.
None of these biblical enterprises, however, had the public sanction of the church. But in 1590 there issued from the press of the Vatican an edition, in three volumes, folio, under the auspices and personal care of the reign- ing Pontiff, Sixtus V.,* and pronounced by him to be free from error, and the authentic text of holy scripture. Yet so replete with misreadings was this specimen of Papal editorship, that Gregory XTV., the successor of Sixtus, suppressed it by authority ; and Clement VIIL, in 1592, presented the church with what his infallibility deemed to be a new and more correct edition, which has formed the basis of all subsequent impressions. The dis- tressing lapse of infalhbility betrayed by Sixtus V. in this affair, has not been overlooked by the antagonists of Rome. A copy of the Sixtine edition is a great rarity. Tbe Clementine text bears the title, Biblia sacra Latina VulgatcB Editionis Sixti V. et dementis VIII.
At the Council of Trent, the church of Rome had given
* Biblia sacra Latina, VulgatcB Editionis Jussu Sixti V. recognita et edita.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 25
formal recognition of the Latin Vulgate, by " notifying, ordaining, and declaring, that this ancient and common edition, which had been approved in the church for such a length of ages, should, in public readings, disputations, preachings, and expositions, be held as authentic, and that no man should dare or presume to reject it on any pretext." *
There have not been wanting fanatics in the Romish communion, who, on the authority of this declaration, have maintained that the Vulgate is altogether exempt from fault or error : while some, as Melchior Canus, Titelman, Salmeron, and even Morinus, have represented St. Jerome as having been expressly inspired for the work.f But it is only justice to say, that many distin- guished scholars and divines in that church, looking at the subject in the simple light of truth, regard the word "authentic" as indicating merely that moral conformity between the version and the original scriptures, which, taken in connexion with the considerations of antiquity and general usage, gave the church a legitimate reason to prefer it, not to the original scriptures, for they are not men- tioned in the decree at all, but to all other Latin editions.
We Protestants, on the other hand, have perhaps entertained too great a prejudice against the Vulgate, on account of this ecumenical sanction of Rome ; as if, from that circumstance, it had become a mere instrument for the maintenance of the errors of Popery. Whereas, the Vulgate existed long before most of those errors were ever heard of. Its substantial basis existed in the third,
* Sacrosancta synodus innotescit, staiuii, et declarat ut hcec
ipsa veins et vulgata editio, quce longo tot saeculorum usu in ecclesia probata est, in publicis lectionibus, disputationibus, prcBdicationibus, et expositionibiis pro authentica habeatur, Sj^c.
•f That erudite father himself was of a very different opinion. See his Preface to the Pentateuch, and his Commentary on the fortieth Chapter of EzekieL
C
26 PROLEGOMENA.
or even the second, century, and the abihty and integrity of Jerome, who revised it in the fourth, are admitted by the whole of Christendom. The men too, who, through a long series of years, shed the only light upon the west- ern church which it then enjoyed, kindled their torches at this source. It was from this volume that Luther, in the library at Erfurt, received the first clear ray of evangelic truth.* Why, then, should we denounce the Vulgate, because the church of Rome, so late as the sixteenth century, thought proper to call this time-proved and venerable - copy of the scriptures an authentic ver- sion ? Had the Council of Trent ordered a new Latin translation to be made, expressly antagonistical to the Reformation, a Protestant would naturally look upon such a work with suspicion and disfavour ; but, as the case stands, the Vulgate is neither the better nor the worse for the opinion expressed of it at Trent. And so far from its being an instrument for the promotion of Popery, we may say, that, with the exception of a few passages, which are admitted, by learned and impartial men among the Romanists themselves, to be blunders or corruptions,-)* a Protestant, who is thoroughly read in the Vulgate, needs no better weapon by which to vindicate the doc- trines of the Reformation.
Though this version, as might be expected from its history, is neither uniform nor homogeneous in all its parts, yet it is universally admitted, tliat its general clearness,
* Auf ein zeit, wie er die biicher nacheinander besieht komht
er uber die Lateinische Biblia — Mathesius in Merle D'Au- bigne's " History," book ii. c. 2.
-j- As Gen. iii. 15 : " She shall bruise thy head." This is rectified by HouBiGANT, a priest of the oratory, whose translation of the Old Testament had the sanction of the Pope. And Heb. xi. 21 : Jacob "adored the top of his staff:" but here the best Romanist critics admit, that a preposition " upon " is wanting, through the omission, intentional or not, of transcribers.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 27
simplicity, and perspicuity are admirable. To the stu- dent of divinity it has a peculiar interest, as the text used in no small part of European theology, both ancient and modern ; and while it assists him to understand more easily the fathers of the western church, it opens a grand repertory of the Latin language itself. The very home- liness of its style is only an argument of its value in this last point of view ; for, as Michaelis says, " It is certain no man can know more than the half of a language, nor have an adequate notion of its etymology, who is ac- quainted only with the small portion that is preserved in elegantly written books. Those phrases of common life which are used by men of liberal education at furthest in epistolary correspondence, and even the expressions of the ilhterate, are not unworthy the notice of philology. I have frequently," adds Michaelis, *' conversed on this subject with the celebrated Gesner, who used to say that the Vulgate was to him an auctor classicics, not because he could learn to write from it elegant Latin, but because it enabled him to survey the Latin language in its whole extent." *
IV. THE SYRIAC VERSIONS.
I. 1 . Contemporaneous with the earliest of the Latin translations just noticed, was the version in the Syrian language, which has been ever since regarded by the Eastern churches as an authentic and inestimable text of the holy scriptures. This version has been distinguished, from time immemorial, by the name of Peschito, that is, " the simple, clear, or uncorrupted."
[A translation of sacred scripture among the rabbin-
* Latin translations of the scriptures have been made in more modern times by Arias Montanus, Beza, Junius and Tremellius, Castellio and Houbigant. But these do not come within the design of the present sketches, which are devoted solely to the ancient versions.
c 2
28 PROLEGOMENA.
ists has been called, as already observed, a Targum, that is, " a representation of words in another tongue," or, the meaning of words in one language delivered in another. If an abstruse or allegorical import be given to the words translated, it is termed Midrash ; on the other hand, the simple rendering of the record, aJ ver- bum, or literally, they call Peschut.
[In the Chaldee Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel, the terms of the Hebrew original are closely ad- hered to, and even retained, in passages where it could be done by reducing them to the Chaldee forms. In the Syriac translation, the same principle obtains in the Old- Testament portion, so far as the wider divergence of the languages would admit ; while, in the New Testament, a remarkable ability has been manifested in exhibiting a faithful representation of the Greek text in that idio- matic Aramean, which was natural to the inspired writers themselves, and into which their Greek compositions so easily reverted. Now, this faithfully simple character of the work, in the estimation of the oriental theologians of the olden time, brought it under the denomination of Peschut, and was evidently the reason of the Syriacized title by which it is always known, Peschito, versio slmjjlex.']
2. The Syriac version of the Old Testament contains the whole of the canonical books. The apocryphal trea- tises are rejected : we have indeed translations of them into the language, which may be found in the Polyglots ; but they were made at a later day from the Septu- agint. But in the Syrian New Testament the canon is less extensive than ours. The Second Epistle of Peter, and that of Jude, the Second and Third Epistles of John, and the Book of Revelation, are wanting : they are supphed in the printed editions ; but the text, whether considered as to style or the mode of conception, is plainly a different production. But though these holy
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 29
books are not found in any manuscripts of the Peschito, nor in the Lectionaries of the Syrian churches ; there has been no disposition, I beheve, on the part of those churches to reject them as spurious : they have contented themselves with the alleged fact, that at the very remote time when their version was made, the Christian church had not universally agreed upon the limits of the canon. The books themselves, however, appear to have had an early place in the Syrian language. They are cited by Ephrem in the fourth century ; * but it has been satisfac- torily shown by Hug, and others, that Ephrem was not acquainted with Greek,f and must therefore have quoted them from a Syrian translation.
3. The Peschito is an immediate version from the Hebrew, in the Old Testament, and from the Greek, in the New. The tradition may be correct which assigns the task of the Old Testament to the labours of several translators.;^ Whether they adverted to the Septuagint in their work, may not be affirmed ; but it is evident, that in subsequent revisions of it the Greek was often consulted, or that the Peschito has been interpolated from it in succeeding times. The same remark will apply in relation to the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the correspond- ing portion of the Syriac. The translators were probably Jews by nation, but Christians in creed. Hence, while there is the same tendency to the rabbinical exegesis,
* Thus, Jude, torn. i. 0pp. Syr. p. 13G; 2 Peter, torn. ii. p. 342 ; 2 John, torn. i. 0pp. Gr. p. 76 ; and the Apocalypse often.
-|- For example : on his visit to Basil of Cassarea, they conversed by means of an interpreter. (Cotelewii Monum. Eccles. Gr. torn. iii. p. b\\. Basilii Vita, in 0pp. tom. iii. Ephrem Encom. Basilii, torn. iii. 0pp. ed. Vossii, p. 712.) So, in a Syrian biography of him, it is said, when he went into Egypt he took one of his
disciples with him as a Greek interpreter Assem. BiO. Orient.
tom. i.
± EPHRE3I on Josh. XV. 28.
30 PROLEGOMENA.
which appears in the Septuagint, it is modified by Chris- tian principle. Indeed, tlie titles prefixed to the Psalms, unless they are of later date, are decisively affirmative of the evangelical views of the translators. *
In the New Testament, the work, as we have said, directly follows the Greek text. This is evident from the numerous words retained from it. In Matthew xxvii., for example, there are eleven such.f Several of the verbal errors, too, could only have been committed by a misap- prehension of the Greek text ; for example, '' Wisdom is justified by her servants,'" (Matt. xi. 19,) where the translator read Tzyyoiv for tsxvwv.
With respect to the class, or family, J to which the Greek manuscripts belonged that the translators followed in the work, it seems most accordant with truth to hold, that they were anterior to any of the recensions which form the basis of the classifications that have been made of them in mo- dern times. The Peschito, in fact, does not evince a uniform agreement with either class, Byzantine, Alexandrine, or Western ; being, in the judgment of Griesbach, "not like any of them, and yet not totally dissimilar from any : for in many of its readings it agrees with the Alexandrine, in more with the Western, and in some also with the Con- stantinopolitan." But the perplexity created by this cir- cumstance, is obviated by referring the translation to a time prior to the labours of the first recensionists, and considering the text as belonging to the xojv:^ sxSoq-ij, or unrevised editions of the apostolic age :
4. Because the date of this version can only be rea- sonably assigned to that venerable period. The opinion that the Peschito was executed so late as the fourth or even fifth century, is now universally rejected. The Syriac
* IJorcB Arumaicce, p. 23.
t See verses 6, 7, H, 12, 19, 27, 28, 30, 38, 48,
ij: Horce Aram. p. 59,
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 31
translation is quoted by Ephrem, in the fourth century, in a manner which betokens that it was, in his time, the current medium of scripture knowledge among the Syrian nation ; he speaks of it as we habitually do of the English Bible, as " our version." The quotations of Origen from the Syriac Old Testament lead us still higher, and imply a co-existent version of the New Testament, about a.d. 230, in the same tongue ; and though less distinct, yet the statement of Eusebius* may be taken as collateral tes- timony of existence a hundred years earlier. For, speak- ing of the works of Hegesippus, (" a church teacher, of strong Jewish colouring and Jewish, origin, who lived under the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, and from whom proceeded the first attempt to compose a church history," t) he says, they contained "several pas- sages out of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, out of the Syriac, and particularly out of the Hebrew tongue, whereby he plainly intimates himself to have been a Jew converted to the faith of Christ." The " Syriac" quota- tions referred to here were, no doubt, scripture ones. Be- sides, it is known that sacred literature had begun to be extensively cultivated among the Syrians in the latter end of the second century ; and there is no reason to deny the probability, that even then they possessed the inspired writings in their own tongue, or to regard as unfounded the tradition, that the Peschito was made under the aus- pices of Abgar, the first Christian king of Edessa.;];
5. The text of the Peschito has not come down to us, through this long lapse of ages, without undergoing some modifications ; but the divisions to which the
* Eccl. Hist. lib. iv. cap. 22.
■j- Neander.
+ In a passage of Jacob of p]dessa, quoted by Abulfaraj, he men- tions " those translators who were sent to Palestine by the apostle Thaddeus, and by Abgar the king."
32 PROLEGOMENA.
Syrian churcli became subject, after the council of Epbe- sus, tended, without doubt, to conserve the general inte- grity of a version which the rival communions held tena- ciously in common. The separate existence of these sects, however, gave occasion to various recensions of the Syrian scriptures ; but the diversities of these recensions ex- tended mainly to the arrangement of the canonical books, or the circumstances of alphabetic characters and dia- critical points.
The recension first printed was that in use among the Jacobites. Moses, a presbyter of Mardeen, in Mesopota- mia, brought two manuscripts to Europe for that pur- pose ; and, after surmounting no little discouragement from the extremely low state of oriental learning at that time in the West, succeeded in printing the New Testa- ment at Vienna, in 1555. Associated with himself in that great work were William Postel and the chancellor John Albert Widmaustadt, whose name generally charac- terizes this beautiful and scarce edition. Since then, the Peschito either wholly, or in the New Testament, has been edited eighteen times.* The best text of the entire scriptures is that of Buchanan and Lee, published at the expense of the Bible Society, in 1816. Of the New Testament, the latest impression is that of Bagster, at London, which follows the text of Widmanstadt.
n. 1. But, besides the Peschito, there are four other versions or modifications of versions in Syriac. The ear- hest of these is called the Philoxenian : it was exe- cuted at Mabug, a diocesan town in the north of Syria, about A.D. 508, and takes its name from Philoxenus or Xcnayas,f then bishop of that place. The real part,
* See HorcB Aramaicce, p. 81.
-f- By accident, a notice of Philoxenus was omitted in tlie Con- spectus of Syrian authors in the former volume.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 33
however, which this prelate took in the w^ork is uncer- tain. Abulfaraj, our main authority on the subject, states, in one place, that the translation was made by Philoxenus himself; (with which, at least with respect to the Gospels, agrees the testimony of an anonymous Arabian author, quoted in the Bibliotheca Orientalis of Asseman ;) but in another, that it had been merely undertaken at his desire ; an assertion which has some- thing like confirmation in the statement of Agheleeus, (apud AssEM. B. 0. ii.) that the task of translation was done by Polycarp, the chor-episcopus, or rural bishop, of the diocess. Distinguishing this version from the later and altered edition of it now known by the name of the Philoxenian, we may say, that very little information exists as to its true character. No manuscript of it is at present known, and neither Abulpharagius nor any other Jacobite author has quoted it. The more elaborate work of Thomas, which we proceed to notice, seems to have set aside its use in that communion : yet from the frag- mentary portions of it obtained in the Vatican, by bishop Wiseman, it would appear to have been a close and valu- able delineation of the Alexandrine Greek.
2. The Philoxenian Syrian version, which was edited at Oxford, in 1/78, 1/79, by Professor White, from a manuscript received from Amida by the Rev. Gloucester Ridley, was accomplished by Thomas of Harchel, or Harkleia, in the year 61 G. In the subscriptions the translator sets forth, that the basis of his work was the text of Philoxenus, which he had compared, with great care, with certain accurate Greek manuscripts* in the monastery of St. Anthony at Alexandria. He added their readings in his margin, after the manner repre- sented in the copper-plate in the Dissertation of Ridley,
♦ These appear to have been two of the Gospels, one of the Acts, and two of the Epistles.
c 5
34 PROLEGOMENA.
which describes these manuscripts.* Thomas consulted the Peschito, as well, with much advantage. On the whole, he made such extensive alterations in the Phi- loxenian document, as to publish a new version, rather than a recension of the text he had undertaken to revise. His production has been accordingly distinguished by modern critics as the Harkleian. It is remarkable for its minute adaptation to the peculiarities of the Greek text.f The copy from which Dr. White printed his edi- tion was one of a ms. edition prepared by Dion Barsalib, bishop of Amida, in the year 1166. In Adler's Versiones SyriaccB there is a description of seven other codices of the Philoxenian, in the Vatican, Barberini, and Angelical libraries at Rome, the Royal at Paris, and the Medicean at Florence ; the latter manuscript, the epigraph declares, was written at Edessa, in the temple of the holy apos- tles, in the year 757.
III. There was a version of the Old Testament, made about the seventh century, which is sometimes called the Syro-Estrangelo. This, it is thought, was executed from the Hexapla Greek of Origen ; but by whom, — whether Mar Abba, a Persian by birth, and primate of the East about 540, or Jacob of Edessa, Paul, bishop of Tola, or Thomas of Charchel, — is matter of dispute. A portion only has survived. Masius, in the preface to his comment on the Book of Joshua, speaks of his having then in his possession a manuscript of it, containing the Books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Esther, Judith, and Tobit ; but the fate of this document
* Disseriatio de Syriacarnm N. T. Versionum Indole atque Usu. See also Michaelis, Introd. to New Test. chap, viii, sect. G, with Marsh's Notes.
t See Adleri Novi Testamenti Versiones Syriacce. Hafnice, 1789. 4to.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 35
is not known. Another portion of the Syro-Estrangelo has, however, been preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, inckiding the Books of Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Hosea, Amos, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Plaggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Isaiah. According to the epigraph at the end of this ms. the version was made from an exemplar of the Septuagint, which Eusebius had corrected from the work of Origeu deposited in the library at Ccesarea. It has the character of being a faithful trans- lation of the Seventy, agreeing exactly with the latter in the places where it differs from the Hebrew. The text is distinguished, also, by the diacritical marks adopted by Origen in the Hexapla. These remains of the Syro- Estrangelo have been given to the world in various parts, at different times, as follow : — The first Psalm, by De Rossi, Parma, 1778;* Daniel, by Bugati, Milan, 1786; Jeremiah and Ezekiel, by Norberg, 4to. London, 1787; the Psalms, Milan, 1816 ; the Books of Kings and Chronicles, Isaiah, the twelve minor Prophets, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes, by Middledorf, Berlin, 1816 ; Daniel, with critical notes, by Halm, at Leipsic, in 1845.
IV. What has been called the Karkaphensian ver- sion is merely a Jacobite revision of the Peschito, modi- fied by occasional alterations, especially in the orthogra- phy of proper names and Grseco-Syriac words, after the manner of the Harkleian, and by another arrangement of the books. Thus, in the Old Testament, the Book of
* Specimen uieditce et Hexaplaris Bibliorum Versionis Syro- EstranghelcB, cum siinplici atque utriusque Fontibus Grceco et Ilebrceo collatce, cum duplici Latina Versione et Notia. Edidit, ac Diutri- bam de rarissimo Codice Ambrosiano, icnde illud hauslum est, pr<s~ miaii J. B. Rossi.
36 PROLEGOMENA.
Job is put before Samuel, and the minor prophets suc- ceed Isaiah, while Daniel is followed by the Proverbs. The New Testament opens with the Acts of the Apostles, which are succeeded by the Epistles of James, Peter, and John. Then follow the fourteen Epistles of St. Paul ; and the four Gospels complete the whole. To what extent this recension has been used, it is impossible to say, or whether the peculiar arrangement of the books obtained uniformly in all copies, or is accidental to the one in the Vatican, from which, as examined and de- scribed by Wiseman, we have the sum of our information on the subject. This manuscript was executed in the monastery of Mar Aaron, on Mount Sigara, in Mesopo- tamia,— a circumstance which, some think, explains the name, Karkaphensian, or Karkufita ; karJiupha signifying "a mountain."
V. There is also in the Vatican at Rome an exemplar of another Syriac version of some parts of the New Tes- tament. It comprises, in about four hundred columns, on vellum, a series of lessons for public reading through- out the year, beginning at Easter, for sabbaths and saints* days, according to the Syrian calendar. It has been amply described by Adler, and was subsequently collated by Scholz. This manuscript was written in a religious house at Antioch, in the year 1 030 ; but the version itself evidently belongs to an earlier period, and was made while Syria was yet subject to the Romans. The dialect is a rustic East Aramean, largely intermixed with foreign words, Greek, Latin, &c. The alphabetical cha- racter varies from the common Syriac, approaching more to the square Chaldee. The l dolath (d) wants the point underneath, which distinguishes it from the i resh (r) ; and instead of the letter w2 iJAe (p) being em- ployed to express alike the sounds of p and /, two dis-
'
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRirTURES. 37
tinct characters are used ; tlie figure 0 denoting jP, and C the letter P. So also in the grammatical forms, the Chaldee developement is followed in prefer- ence to the Western Syriac. To this version has been given the name of the Hierosolymitan. It was made on the basis of the Alexandrine Greek text. The passage, John vii. 53 ; viii. 1 — 11, wanting in the Peschito, is given in close resemblance with the text of the Codex Bezce.
V. THE SCRIPTURES IN THE DIALECTS OF EGYPT.
Christianity took early root in Egypt. Among the first evangelists we find men of Alexandrine education, as Apollos and Barnabas of Cyprus. The apocryphal ** Gospel according to the Egyptians" is thought, by Neander, to prove the influence so soon exerted by the great facts of our religion among that people.* Tradi- tion assigns to St. Mark the honour of being the founder of the church in Alexandria. Constant intercourse and congeniality of spirit would contribute to spread the gospel among the Jewish and Grecian colonies in Lower Egypt ; and though the prevailing use of the country language, the power of the priests, and the strength of the olden superstitions, would render the progress of the truth difficult in Middle and Upper Egypt, yet a persecu- tion of the Christians in Thebais, under the emperor Septimius Severus,f proves that the faith of the Cross had already made considerable way in Upper Egypt towards the close of the second century.
I. The Coptic;^ language was a combination of the antique Egyptian and Greek ; the latter having become so widely used in Lower Egypt after the time of Alexander,
♦ NeandeRj K. G. § 1. -f- EusEB. //. E. lib. vi. cap. 1.
X Coptos, Aiguptos. So Scaliger.
38 PROLEGOMENA.
as, by coalescing -with the parent language, to liave pro- duced a new dialect.
The version of scripture in this tongue is called, inter- changeably, the Coptic or Memphitic. The Old Testa- ment is from the Hesychian text of the Seventy, and was probably executed in the fourth century. Parts of it only survive. Of these, Wilkins published the Penta- teuch, in 1/31. The Psalms were printed at Rome, in 1744 and 1749. Portions of Jeremiah, (ix. 17, to xiii.) by Mingarelli, at Bologna, in 1785 ; and the ninth chap- ter of Daniel, by Miinter, at Rome, in 1786. In our own time. Archdeacon Tattam has published the twelve Minor Prophets, at Oxford. The New Testament was ren- dered on the Alexandrine Greek text, and not later than the third century. It was edited by Dr. Wilkins, with a Latin version, and printed at Oxford.
II. In the Sahidic or Thebaic dialect the Old and New Testaments had been translated, according to Woide, in the second century. But the work was probably co-eval with the Memphitic. Parts of the Old Testament have been edited by Miinter, Zoega, and Mingarelli ; and of the New, by Woide and Ford. As might be expected, it harmonizes, with some few exceptions, with the Alexan- drine recension of the Greek.
III. There was a third Egyptian version, in a bastard kind of dialect, called the Bashmuric, Ammonian, or (as Quatremere) Oasitic, of which some fragments only of each Testament have been brought to light. These were published at Copenhagen, in 1816, with a Latin version.
[The student who wishes to turn his attention to these dialects will find, both on them and the other oriental languages, a valuable bibliography of Grammars and Lex- icons in the Rev. T. H. Home's " Introduction to the
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 39
critical Study of the Holy Scriptures." The several edi- tions of the Egyptian scriptures above mentioned are entitled as follows : —
Quinque Libri Moysis ProphetcB in Lingua Mgyptiaca. Ex MSS. Vaticano, Parisiensi, et Bodleiano descripsity ac Laiine vertit Dawid ^Yji.ki-ns. Lond.\72>\. 4to.
Psalterium Coptico Arabicum. Romce, 1/44, 4to.
Psalterium Alexandrinum Coptico- Aimhicum. RomcBy 1749, 4to.
Buodecim Prophetarum minorum Libros in Lingua jUggptiaca, vulgo Coptica seu Memphitica : Edidit H. Tattam, A.m. Oxon. 1836, 8vo.
Novum Testamentum j^gyptiacum, vulgo Copticum : ex MSS. Bodleianis descripsit, cum Vaticanis et Parisiensi- bus contidit, et in Latinum Sermonem convertit David WiLKiNS. Oxoniiy 1716, 4to.
Sahidic. — Appendix ad Editionem Novi Testamenti GrcBci e Codice Alexandrino descripti a G. C. Woide : in qua continentur Fragmenta Novi Testamenti juxta Inter- pretationem Dialecti Superioris AEgypti, quae Thebaica vel Sahidica appellatur, e Codd. Oxoniens. maxima ex parte desmnpta. Cum Dissertatione de Versione Mgyptiaca: Qui- bus subjicitur Codicis Vaticani CoUatio. Oxon. 1799, fol.
Frederici Munter Commentatio de Indole Versionis Novi Testamenti Sakidicce : accedu7it Fragmenta Epis- tolarum Pauli ad Timotheumy ex Membranis Sahidicis Musei Borgiani, Velitris. Hafnice, 1789.
FragmentumEvangelii S. Joannis Grceco-Coptico-Thebai- cum : ex Museo Borgiano, Latine versum et Notis illustra- tum ab Augustino Antonio Georgio. Rom. 1789, 4to.
Bashmuric. — Fragmenta Basmurico-Coptica Veteris et Novi Testamentiy qucB in Museo Borgiano Velitris asservantur, cum reliquis Versionibus /Egyptiis contulit, Latine vertit, nee non criticis et jihilologicis Adnotationibus illustravit, W. F. Engelbreth. Jla/nicSy 1816, 4to.]
40 PROLEGOMENA.
VI. THE BIBLE IN ETHIOPIC.
Though revealed religion liad not been altogether unknown in Abyssinia in preceding ages, through the medium of intercourse with Palestine, and, at the com- mencement of the gospel era, by the presence of con- verted Jews and proselytes ; yet it was not till far into the fourth century that Christianity had manifested its power in those lands, or that Ethiopia, as a nation, stretched out her hands unto God.* Hence the assertion sometimes made, that the Ethiopic version dates so far back as the second century, is altogether improbable. That the version, however, was nearly co-eval with the first general outgoings of the gospel in the country, is evident from the reference which Chrysostom makes to its existence in his time. This translation is in the Geez, or sacred dialect of the Ethiopians. The Old Testament is from the Septuagint. It is used by the Abyssinian Jews, though evidently made by Christians. The New Testament is said to have been from the Greek : it is a literal version, though not equal in all its parts, and agrees with the text of Alexandria ; but the translators appear to have had frequent reference to the Syrian Peschito. Some critics have thought that it was made upon several existing versions rather than the Greek archetype. Could this opinion be substantiated, its value would be materially diminished.
The Ethiopic New Testament is in four parts : the Gos- pels, the Acts, the fourteen Epistles of St. Paul, the
* 1 Kings X. Acts viii. Socrat. Schol., Hist. Eccl. lib. i. p. 19. LuDOLF. Hist. JEthiop. vol. iii. p. 4. See too an abstract of the "History of the Abyssinian Church," by Professor I<ee, appended to Bishop Gobat's "Journal of a Residence" in that Country, p. 322.
•j- Horn. 2 in Joan.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 41
catholic epistles. The Book of Revelation (Ahukalamsis) takes the form of a supplement.
[For an account of known biblical manuscripts in Ethiopic, see Ludolf's *' Commentary on his History of the Ethiopians," Francfort, 1691. Le Long, Bib. Sac. ed. Masch. vol. i. p. 1/3. Bruce's "Travels," vol. i. book ii. c. G, 7. Horne's " Introduction," vol. ii. part i. p. 229 ; and the Catalogue published by T. P. Piatt in 1823.]
The portions which have been hitherto printed, are the Psalms and Canticles, by Potken, at Rome, 1513: reprinted at Cologne in 1518. The Psalms are printed from Potken's text in the London Polyglot, 1656. AYe have also an Ethiopic Psalter edited by Ludolf.*
The New Testament in this language was first printed at Rome, with the title. Test amentum Novum, cum Epis-
tola Pauli ad Hebrceos Qucb omnia Fr. Petrus,
jEthiops, Auxilio Piorum, sedente Paido Hi. Pont. Max. et Claudio illius Regni Imperatore, imprimi curavit. Anno Sahitis 1548. Ro7nce, 4to. This edition, which is of the utmost rarity, was reprinted in the London Polyglot. But it is not unimportant to mention, that in the Acts of the Apostles, the manuscript being defective, some parts were rendered, by the editors, from the Vulgate. f
A Latin translation of the Ethiopic Gospels was made by Dudley Loftus, and corrected, though insufficiently, by Castel, for the Polyglot ; but the more accurate version is that by Professor Bode.;};
* Reprinted by the Bible Society in 1815.
•f The names of the editors, themselves Abyssinians, are found in the subscription at the end of JMatthew's Gospel. They were Tesfa Sion, IMalhesin, (who took the name of Peter, as in the title,) Tensca Waldi, and Zalaski.
% Novum Testamentum ex Versione JEihiopici Interpretis in Bih- liis, polyglottis Anglicanis editum, ex JEthiopxca Lingua in Laiinam translatum. Brunsviga, 1752, 1755. 2 torn. 4to.
42 PROLEGOMENA.
The latest edition of the Ethiopia text of the Gospels is that by Thomas Pell Piatt, M.A. London, 1826.
VII. THE OLDER PERSIC VERSIONS.
If, as Eusebius tells us was the tradition in his day, St. Thomas the Apostle laboured in Parthia,"^ there might have been, even in the earliest days of the faith, some communication of the gospel to the Persians, who then formed a part of that empire. A fragment of Barde- sanes, preserved in the " Evangehc Preparation " of Euse- bius, mentions the spreading of Christianity at that time, about A.D. 190, in Parthia, Media, Persia, and Bactria. We know that in the time of Manes, and when, under the Sassanides, the Persian empire had regained its inde- pendence, the churches of that land were neither few nor inconsiderable. They became subject to the presidency of the metropolitan bishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon ; and, in the endurance of successive and severe persecu- tions, attested an invincible fidelity to the truth once dehvered to the saints. After the Nestorian troubles in the fifth century, the Persian Christians, who had always a strong affinity both in doctrine and discipline with the Syrian communion, separated, in common with the latter, from the Byzantine hierarchy.
That the scriptures, or considerable portions of them, were soon translated into Persian, seems evident from the references of Chrysostom and Theodoret to such a version in their day. And Maimonides speaks of a Persian Pen- tateuch which had been made several centuries before Mahomet. But no vestige of these primitive versions remains.
1. There is a translation of the Pentateuch into Per^
* Historia Ecclesiastical lib. iii. cap. 1.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 43
sian, which is thought to have been executed in, or soon after, the eighth century, and which was first printed, together with the Hebrew text, the Chaldee Targum of Onkelos, and the Arabic Pentateuch of Saadia, at Con- stantinople in 1546.* This edition was in Hebrew cha- racters. But Walton inserted it in the fourth volume of his Polyglot in the proper Persian letter ; a task which was accomplished by Hyde, who interfered with the text by supplying the chasms, though between brackets. This is the case also in the eleventh chapter of Leviticus, where the names of such birds and animals as were, per- haps, unknown to the versionist, were omitted. The author of this work was Jacob ben Joseph, surnamed Tavvossus, or Tusi. The meaning of this cognomen has been disputed ; but it is commonly considered to refer to Tus, a town of Persia, where, in former times, there was a Jewish college of some reputation. The translation was made from the Hebrew, many parts of which are rendered with great ability. He applies the prophecy of Shiloh, Genesis xlix. to the Messiah.
2. Of the Psalms there are two Persic metaphrases mentioned by Walton, (Proleg. xvi. sect. 6 — 8,) both by Romanist Priests, and made on the Latin Vulgate. These have not been edited.
3. And of the Proverbs, another, in manuscript, in one of the public libraries of Paris. Described by Hass- ler, Studien und Kritiken, 1829, p. 409.
4. There are two ancient Persic translations of the Gospels, of which the most valuable is printed in the fifth volume of the London Polyglot, with a Latin render- ing by Samuel Clarke. The Persian here is from the Peschito S}Tiac, as even the very words of the Syriac are sometimes retained, with a Persic gloss. This work is
* Walt OK, Prol. xvi., says 1551.
44 PROLEGOMENA.
attributed to Simon ibn Yusef ibn Abraheem al Tabreezy, in the middle of the fifteenth century. Though the trans- lation is loose, and not free from a certain Romanistic tendency, it is, nevertheless, well worthy of study. The diction is very commendable.*
The other translation was begun to be printed by Pro- fessor Wheeloc in 1652; (Quatuor Evangeliorum Domini nostri Jesu Christi Versio Persicay ad Numerum Situmque Verborum Latine data ;) but he did not live to complete it. This was accomplished in 1657, by Pierson, who, in a new title-page, describes it as, Quatuor Evangeliorum D. N. J. C. Vei'sio Persica, Syriacam et Arabicam sua- vissune redolens, ad verba et mentem Grceci Textus Jideliter et venuste concinnata. Londini. 1657. It was printed from a manuscript in the Bodleian, with occasional read- ings from two others, — that formerly in the possession of Dr. Pococke, and a second in the University of Cambridge. The two editors were not agreed as to the text rendered by the Persian translator ; but there is good evidence to conclude that he merely followed the Latin Vulgate.
VIII. HOLY SCRIPTURE IN GOTHIC.
The Maeso-Goths, a people of Scandinavian origin, had first settled in Dacia, or Wallachia, from beyond the Borysthenes. They appear to have received the gospel in the latter part of the third century, as among the sig- natures of the fathers present at the council of Nice, in 325, is that of '' Theophilus, bishop of the Goths." At the time when Arianism was in the ascendant, they were
* The Rev. Henry Martyn, then writing at Shiraz, says on this point, " To my surprise, the old despised Polyglot version was not only spoken of as superior to the rest, that is, the two by Sabat, but it was asked, ' What fault is found in this ? This is the language we speak.'" — "Journals," vol. ii. p. 368.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 45
induced to adopt the prevailiug error. The eminent Ulfila, who became their chief pastor in 348, and on whom, according to Theodoret,* rests much of the blame of their perversion, exhibited, nevertheless, great activity for their general improvement. He first reduced their language to a written form, and then translated into it the holy scriptures. This was about a.d. 360. His text was the Septuagint for the Old Testament, and the Greek for the New, though not without reference to the early Latin versions. He has the reputation of having been an upright as well as able translator. f Large por- tions of this work are extant. Of the Old Testament only a fragment has been printed, a part of Nehemiah. The manuscript copy of the four Gospels at LIpsal is well known by the name of the Codex Argenteiis, from having been written in silver letters. It has been edited successively, at Dort in 1665, 4to. with a Glossary, and at Oxford in 1/50. Fragments, also, of the Epistles have been printed by Knittel and Mai. But the most complete edition is, Ulfilas : Veteris et Novi Testamenti Ver~ sionis Gothics Fi'cigmenta quce siipersimt, edd. H. C. de Gabelentz et Dr. J. Loebe. Altenhurgi et Lips. 2 vols. 4to. 1836, 1843. Some interesting notices of this version, and of the silver-lettered manuscript of Upsal, may be found in Marsh's 3Iichaelis, vol. ii. cap. 7.
* Ilistoria Ecclesiastlca, lib. iv. p. 33.
•f- Ulfila is said to have been descended from Christian parents who had been taken captives by the Goths, in one of their incursions into Cappadocia, and carried away into Thrace. When it is affirmed that his doctrinal sentiments do not influence his biblical translation, it ought to be remembered that we are not in possession of the full means of determining, as the most important texts which bear upon the subject (as John i. and Romans ix. 5) in the Gothic version have not been preserved.
46 PROLEGOMENA.
IX. THE ARMENIAN BIBLE.
As Ulfila was the founder of the Uterature of his peo- ple, so Miesrop, about sixty years later, introduced the art of writing among the Armenians. He invented their alphabet, and consecrated it to the service of religion, by making it the vehicle for a translation of the scriptures. A Christian church had been formed in Armenia so early as the third century, as we gather from the circumstance mentioned by Eusebius,* that Dionysius of Alexandria, A.D. 247, "wrote concerning penitence, to the brethren in Armenia, over whom Merouzanes was bishop." But in the reign of Tiridates, who himself became a convert, the gospel, through the agency of Gregory, surnamed Lusaworitsch, *' tbe Illuminator," had well-nigh pervaded the land. The priesthood and partisans of the old Zend- ism, however, obtained a renewal of political power, when, in 428, Armenia became subject to the Persians ; and the Christians found themselves exposed to the most decisive tests of fidelity, in the determined opposition of powerful enemies. A conflict of fifty years' duration suf- ficiently proved the implacable hatred of the one party to the gospel, and the steadfastness of the other in main- taining it. At length, in the year 485, the free exercise of Christian worship was accorded them.
It is probable that the Bible used among these primi- tive congregations was the Syrian Peschito. Yet from one place in the History of Moses of Chorene, it would appear that their liturgical service was performed in the Greek language. Such forms may have been introduced by Gregory from the church of Csesarea in Cappadocia, with which he had been connected ; and in their present Liturgy there are prayers attributed to Basil and Athana- sius. Whether Miesrop translated from the Greek text
* Historia Ecclesiastica, lib. vi. p. 4G.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 47
of the scriptures, or the Syriac, has been debated. But from the plain testimony of Moses of Chorene, it appears that Miesrop and Isaac (the patriarch at that time) had twice translated the holy volume from the Syriac, and then, receiving a Greek copy on the return of certain of their fellow-labourers from the council of Ephesus, " they cheerfully submitted to the task of again translating it," that is, from the Greek. The work was revised shortly after by ]Moses of Chorene and others, who had resided "at the famous school of Alexandria" to perfect them- selves in the Grecian tongue for that purpose.*
The version thus executed was based, in the opinion of Dr. Scholz, on old mss. of the recensions of Constan- tinople and Alexandria ; and when we consider the sin- cere zeal and ability of the men engaged in the work, and the excellent adaptation of their language to express, word by word, the terms of the original, it will be per- ceived, that had the Armenian version come down to us as it proceeded from their pens, it would have been a most valuable possession to the biblical student. But, unhappily, the accession of the churches of the Lesser Armenia to the Romish communion led to an extensive alteration in their scripture text. Haitho, who came to the throne of the Lesser Armenia in 1224, after a reign of forty years became a Franciscan friar, and, among other labours for the advancement of Popery among the people, conformed the Armenian Bible to the Roman Vulgate. Hence the version itself has lost its distinctive character, and much of its critical value ; as no copy of the ori- ginal Armenian text of the New Testament is known to exist, though Adler mentions a manuscript of the Penta- teuch, in the Bibliotheca Casanatensis at Rome, of an age anterior to the time of Haitho.
The Armenian Bible was first printed under the super-
* 3IoYS. Chor. Hist. lib. iii. cap. CI.
48 PROLEGOMENA.
intendence of Uscan, bishop of Erivaii, who had been deputed to this work by a council of his church,* and who accompUshed it at Amsterdam in 1666, in quarto; and the New Testament separately in 1668. He, too, in- terpolated certain passages from the Vulgate. The Testa- ment was beautifully reprinted in 1698, and again at Venice in 1/89. There is an edition of the Bible at Constantinople, 1705, in quarto, and more esteemed than that of Amsterdam. The edition of Venice was pub- lished by Dr. Zohrab, a learned Armenian, who, in 1805, brought out from the press of the Lazarist monastery there, a critical edition of the entire Bible, in the preparation of which he had collated sixty-nine manuscripts of various parts of scripture. He also published, in 1825, the New Testament in ancient and modern Armenian, the latter of which is much commended for its correctness.
X. THE GEORGIAN BIBLE.
The gospel, it is said, was first testified in Iberia, now Georgia, in the time of Constantine the Great, by a female slave, who, as Rufinus records,f made so good an impres- sion on the minds of the king and queen themselves, that, abandoning their false gods, they embraced the faith of Christ, and sent to Constantinople for mission- aries to preach it among their people. The scriptures were translated into the language of this Caucasian tribe in the sixth century; but the version, in the state in which it exists at present, takes but a low standard in
♦ At this time a copy of the scriptures in Armenia had reached the price of about fifty pounds sterling.
f RuF. Hist. EccL lib. x. cap. 10; Socrat. Schol. lib. i. cap. 20; SozoMEN. lib. xi. cap. 7 ; Giesler, cap. viii. sect. 107. For more on the Georgian version, see Henderson's "Biblical Re- searches in Russia," 6cc. ; and Eichhorn's Allgemeim Bibliothek, vol. i. p. 153.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 49
criticism, on account of the interpolations from the Sla- vonic, introduced hy the Georgian Princes, Arcil and Wacuset, when it was first printed in 1/43.
XI. THE SCRIPTURES IN SLAVONIC.
The Slav literature originated, in the ninth century, with Cyril of Thessalonica, and his brother Methodius, two missionaries, of noble birth and ardent zeal, who had been sent among the Mcesians and Bulgarians by the empress Theodora. Like Ulfila and Miesrop, these mes- sengers of the truth invented an alphabet, and embodied the scriptures in the newly-written tongue. They made the Slavonian version from the Septuagint Old Testament, and the Constantinopolitan Greek of the New. Professor Alter, indeed, says, that the Old Testament was done from the Vetus Itala, and altered, in the fourteenth cen- tury, from Greek manuscripts ; but this is an erroneous opinion. There seems an absurdity in the idea that these native Greeks would have recourse to the Latin translation as the basis of their work. Many useful points of infor- mation on this version may be found in Dr. Henderson's " Researches in Russia," &c. ; but the most elaborate account of the Slavonic scriptures is that published by Dobrowsky, in the Neue Orientalische Bibliothek, vol. vii. p. 155, and of which Bishop Marsh has given the following summary : " 1 . The Slavonian version is very literally translated from the Greek ; the Greek construc- tion being frequently retained where it is contrary to the genius of the Slavonian ; and resembles in general the most ancient manuscripts. 2. In the Gosjiels it agrees with the Codex Sfephmii more frequently than with any other Greek manuscript. 3. Li the Catholic epistles it agrees in general with the Codex Alexandrinius, and often in the Revelation. 4. In the Acts, and in the Epistles
D
50 PROLEGOMENA.
of St. Paul, it agrees in general with the most ancient Mss. ; but sometimes with one, sometimes with another, yet most frequently with Wetstein's Codex E. 5. Of the readings adopted by Griesbach in the text of his Greek Testament, the Slavonian version has at least three- fourths. 6. Where the united evidence of ancient mss. is against the common printed reading, the Slavonian version agrees with the ancient manuscripts. 7. It has not been altered from the Vulgate, as some have supposed, though the fact is in itself almost incredible. 8. It varies from the text of Theophylact,* in as many in- stances as they agree ; and their coincidence is to be ascribed, not to an alteration from Theophylact, but to the circumstance, that both Theophylact and the author of the Slavonian version used the same Greek edition. 9. The Slavonian version has no readings peculiar to itself, or what the critics call lectiones singidares.''''
From the account given by this eminently competent writer, it is easy to conclude, that the high estimation in which it has been held by those who have been able, through their knowledge of the language, to avail them- selves of this respectable version, has not been exagge- rated. Of the Old Testament, the earliest manuscripts in Slavonic do not go beyond the fifteenth century ; but there are copies of the New which date so far back as the eleventh. The version was first printed at Ostrog, in 1581.
XII. ARABIC VERSIONS.
While the residence of a multitude of Jews in Arabia afforded a medium for the early preaching of the gospel, it occasioned, at the same time, a formidable obstacle to
* Archbishop of Acrida, in Bulgaria, about a.d. 1077. His com- mentaries on the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, are in much repute for the assistance they give in the literal explication of scripture.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 51
its success. Whether Paul soon after his conversion preached in that country, or spent his time there exclu- sively in study and devotion, cannot now be determined. The apostle Bartholomew, according to old tradition, preached in Arabia, as did Pantsenus, the catechist of Alexandria, in the following century. Origen, also, may be traced in this department of evangelical labour, and from his time the Christian church included many con- gregations of Arabians ; but the wandering manner of life peculiar to that people, as well as the active hostility of Jewish and Pagan opposers, prevented any exten- sive or permanent manifestation of Christianity among them. Nor did that which they received long retain its native character ; the lustre of the truth was obscured ; a false gospel, even in the letter, usurped the place of the true one, in the shape of apocryphal records. Thus the distorted representations which Mahomet himself gave of the gospel, might have seemed to him to be genuine, he having derived them from the corrupt vehicles of infor- mation, then currently received in those lands as authen- tic witnesses of the events and doctrines of the Christian faith.
Of the canonical scriptures themselves, no portions appear to have existed in Arabic till some time after the Mahometan epoch.* But between the period of the Sara- cenic conquests and the fourteenth or fifteenth century, several versions were made of different portions of the Old and New Testaments ; from the Hebrew and Greek originals, from the Septuagint, from the Peschito Syriac, and Coptic, and from the Latin.
♦ There is an obscure account in a biography of the prophet, by Ibraham, of Haleb, (published at Cairo in lii'M),) that the gospel had been translated by Warka ibn Naufel, a relative of Khadija, shortly before Mahomet couimenced his career ; but I am not aware that this statement has any trace of authentic corroboration.
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I. Of the first class of these are,
1. The Pentateuch, by Rabbi Saadia, surnamed Hag- gaon, or the Illustrious, who was rector of the Jewish academy at Sora, and died a.d. 942. It was printed at
^Constantinople in 1546, and reprinted, though not with- out interpolations, in the Paris and London Polyglots. It has been well designated an honourable monument of the biblical philology of the tenth century.
Beside the Pentateuch, there are also extant, by the same translator, a version of Job and of Isaiah. The former exists in manuscript at Oxford ; but the Isaiah was printed at Jena in 1/91. R. Saadia translated the pro- phet Rosea also, as appears from a quotation of it by Kimchi.
2. The Pentateuch of Abu Said, a Jew, or rather Samaritan, of the twelfth century. This was made, it is thought, in rivalry of that of Saadia Haggaon. It is based on the text of the Hebreeo-Samaritan Pentateuch. Only parts of it have been printed ; but manuscripts may be found at Oxford and Paris.
3. The Pentateuch, accomplished by a Moorish Jew of the thirteenth century, and distinguished for its ex- treme closeness ; it was printed by Erpenius, at Leyden, in 1622.
4. The Books of Genesis, Psalms, and Daniel, '*by the hand of Saaidia ben Levi Aznakiit," a Moorish Jew. MSS. in the British Museum. (Harl. No. 5,505.)
5. The Book of Joshua ; by whom, or when, ren- dered, unknown. It is printed in the London and Paris Polyglots ; where also may be found some Arabic frag- ments of the Books of Kings, (first book, chap, xii., to second book, chap. xii. 16,) and the first nine chapters of Nehemiah.
All these translations of the Old-Testament scriptures are valuable, from the relation of the two languages, in
i
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 5.3
illustrating the import of various words and formulse in the Hebrew original. The work of Abu Said, (No. 2,) would doubtless be of acceptable service in a critical edi- tion of the text of the Samaritan Pentateuch, for the emendation of which so few materials are in existence.
6. Of the New Testament from the Greek there is a version of the Gospels ; age unknown. It has been retouched from the Peschito and Memphitic. This, with the Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse, of the eighth or ninth century, is printed in both the Polyglots.
7. Erpenius edited the New Testament in Arabic, at Leyden in 1616, from a manuscript of the fourteenth century ; but whether this was made from the Greek or Syriac, is disputed. The Rev. Henry Martyn pronounces it, as a version, to be " indescribably bad. It is not a translation," says he, " but a paraphrase, and that always wrong," *
II. Of the second class, comprising those founded on the Septuagint, we have, 1. A version of the prophets, made subsequently to the tenth century. 2. The Psalms, printed by Dr. Sionita at Rome in 1614, but before him by Justiniani at Geneva in 1516. 3. The Psalms, made, perhaps, in the eleventh century, by Abdallah ibn al Fadhl : they were printed at Aleppo in 1/06, and Lon- don in 1725 ; and, 4. The Psalms, as printed in the Polyglots.
III. While, from the Peschito, a version in Arabic exists of Job, Chronicles, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, and fragments of the Psalter; printed at Kashaia, near Lebanon, in 1610 ; there are translations, also, of various parts of the New Testament from the Syriac and Coptic, copies of
* Journals.
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which, written in parallel columns with them as used in the East, may be found in the Bibliotheqiie Royale, at Paris.
IV. Some parts of scripture have been translated into Arabic from the Latin Vulgate ; these are modern, and the work of Romish missionaries, or of oriental monks residing at Rome. Such is the New Testament published there in 1/52, by Raphael Tooki, bishop of Arsan.
XIII. THE BIBLE IN ANGLO-SAXON.
So early as the year 706, Aldhelm, the first bishop of Sherborn, translated the Psalms of David into Anglo- Saxon ; * and another version of the same book was exe- cuted, about the same time, by an anchorite, named Guthlac. Egbert, or Eadfrid, bishop of Holy Island, soon after finished a version of the four Gospels, a copy of which exists among the Cottonian manuscripts in the British Museum. These efforts were speedily foUowed by the labours of the Venerable Bede, who translated the Gospel of St. John ; and by a version of the four Gospels by two presbyters, named Farmen and Owen. The Psalms were again translated by Alfred in 900, and the Pentateuch by Elfric, archbishop of Canterbury, in 995, together with some other books of the Old Testament.
As made from the old Latin, these works may not be without use in the department of criticism, in identifying the readings of that version. Le Long has given an account of the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, in his Biblio- theca Sacra, tom. i. ; and a well-digested catalogue may
* Previously Caedmon had given a sort of metrical paraphrase of some parts of Genesis, (vide Smith's "Religion of Ancient Britain," p. 384,) and parts of scripture for church reading might have been already translated.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 55
also be seen in Wanley's Appendix to Hickes's Thesaurus, Oxford, 1705.
No entire edition of the Anglo-Saxon scriptures has yet been published ; but the Gospels have been several times printed.
■ These versions of the Holy Books in so many languages have not only ministered to the moral improvement of mankind, and the special edification of Christian commu- nities in the different countries to which they have been indigenous, but have also tended to the well-being of the church at large, and the general advancement of Christi- anity : First, as becoming permanent and irrecusable vouchers for the integrity and genuineness of the Bible itself ; Secondly, as affording powerful aid in the ministe- rial interpretations of the scriptures ; so as that, with an ability to read and compare them with the originals, a man of prayerful and meditative habits, in preparing for the pulpit, will seldom find himself obliged to have re- course to our voluminous commentators ; while. Thirdly, they have formed an important class of instruments in the apparatus of biblical criticism, in its legitimate exer- cise for the emendation or the defence of the sacred text. Thus, in the investigation of those various readings which had been produced by the repeated transcription of copies during the ages which preceded the use of printing, the value of the ancient translations cannot but be apparent ; and that because their antiquity is undoubted, their text far from being seriously impaired, and inasmuch as the manuscripts from which some of them were made were both older than any now extant, and such as the translators would reasonably choose as the purest and best. In their researches on the state of the biblical text, Kennicot and De Rossi on the Hebrew Old Testament; Morinus on the Samaritan Pentateuch ; Holmes and Parsons on the
56 PROLEGOMENA.
Septuagint ; and Erasmus, Walton, Mill and Lejay, Ben- gel and Wetstein, Griesbach, Matthai and Scholz, on the Greek Testament ; have all felt their obligation to the ancient versions. Without these, their examination of the best preceding editions, of inedited codices, or of casual quotations of passages in the writings of the fathers, would not have led to those entirely satisfac- tory conclusions with which their labours have been so happily crowned.
As, however, the relative value of these old translations will admit of various degrees, the student must see the necessity of using them with proper caution, and of learn- ing to form a practical estimate of their comparative utility as means of criticism or of interpretation, by an inquiry,
1. Into the AGE in which any given version was exe- cuted ; since those will, of course, have a peculiar value which ascend the nearest to the times of the original writers : for example, the Septuagint and principal Tar- gums on the Old Testament, and the Peschito and Vetus Latina on the New.
2. The SOURCE of the version : whether it was the ori- ginal Hebrew or Greek, and, if so, of what recension or family; because that translation is to be especially preferred which, with the circumstance of antiquity, combines the character of immediateness from the archetypal record.
3. The COUNTRY where it was made : as this may lead to good conclusions on the class of manuscripts on which the translator laboured ; different classes or families of texts having been commonly employed by different churches.
4. Some important inferences may also be made from what can be known of the translator himself: (1.) As to his creed ; was he a Jew or a Christian ? If the former, a Rabbinist or Karaite ? if a Christian, of the Arian school, as Ulfila ? a Monophysite, as Thomas of Harchel ? of the Greek church, as Cyril and Methodius, who translated the
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. .>/
scriptures into Slavonic ? or a devotee of Rorae, as Hai- tho, the interpolator of the Armenian version ? (2.) As to his competency : Did he translate from his native lan- guage, or into it ? Was his acquaintance with the tongue from which he translated familiar and established, or recent and imperfect? Does he falter at a term some- times, or interpret the same phrase in different ways ; loosely paraphrase, or pass over a word altogether, whether from carelessness, or want of an adequate acquaintance with its meaning ? or does his work evince the accuracy of a good philologist, the correctness of the divine, enlightened on the analogy of the faith, and the resolute and indomitable industry of the conscientious interpreter ? What, moreover, were the principles on which his task was elaborated ? Did he purpose to translate ad verbuniy or only ad sensum ; a literal and bona fide translation, or a merely metaphrastic representation of the general mean- ing of the inspired writers ?
5. The PRESENT STATE OF THE TEXT of any version will be a material point for consideration. Can the history of the text be ascertained 1 Is the version now as it was in its early days, or has it been altered by comparatively modern editors, whether from the original, or especially from other translations ? as the Vulgate, for example ; pro- fessed emendations from which, have destroyed the dis- tinctive character of more than one ancient translation. There is a wide field for labour in this single region of biblical criticism ; and much gratitude is due to such men as Winer,* Roediger,t Rosenmiiller,| and Von Lcngerke,§
* WivER on the " Targum of Onkelos."
-|- De Origine et Indole Arabicce Librorum V. T. Ilistoricorum Interpretationis Libri duo: acripait jEmilius Roedigeu, Fhi/os^ Dr. et Theolog. Licent., Halis Sad-onum, 1820.
^ RosENMULLEU ou the Persian Pentateuch.
j^ Commentatio Critica de EpJircemo Syro S. S. Interprete ; qua simul Versionis Syriacce quam Peschito vocant, Lectiones varite ex
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who have devoted their time and erudition to some depart- ments of it.
From this rapid survey of the resources of the Bible student, under the head of ancient versions, the pre- eminence of the Peschito-Syriac will be at once discern- ible. Of the Old Testament in it, it is enough to remark, with Renaudot, who has given in a sentence the settled conviction to which the most extensive research will conduct us, that '*the version which all the Syrians use in common was made from the Hebrew, and is, of all oriental translations, the most ancient."
The direct relation, also, of the Peschito New Testa- ment to the original Greek, and that as exhibited in manuscripts of times long anterior to the age of the oldest now extant, — for even admitting that it was made, say so late as the third century, still, as the translators would naturally select the oldest manuscripts they could obtain, we are then brought back to the times of the apostolic autographs, — the strong presumptive evidence arising from the consideration of the period when, and the region where, the work was accomplished ; that the translators were men of the apostolical school, and con- versant, it may be, with some of the apostles themselves ; the extreme, yet elegant and erudite, simplicity which generally distinguishes the style, so faithful, yet so unre- strained ; the sense of nature which pervades the narra- tive portions, showing that the pen was in the hand of a man who had personal remembrance of the places and scenes depicted ; the profound theological spirit which reigns in the dogmatic portions of the work ; and the
Ephroemo Commentariis collectcs exhibentur. Auctore E. a Len- GERKE, Phil. Dr. Halis Saoconum, 1828. To which we may add the work of Hirzel on the " Syriac Pentateuch," and that of Credner on the " Minor Prophets," in the same version.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 59
recollection, too, that the version has been a witness for the truth in the benighted East for so many ages, a fontal light from which the oriental church has derived its only pure instruction in righteousness, through the entire period of her apocalyptic desolation ; — all these attributes, and others which will not fail to discover themselves to the student, must invest this venerable monument of the learning of the primitive church with a value and an excellency peculiar to itself.
As with the Gospels already pubUshed, the following ver- sion of the Acts and Epistles has been made directly from the Syriac. We have Latin translations of the Peschito, by Sionita, De la Boderie, and Schaaf ; but they have not obtained the entire approval of the learned. The Latin translations in the Polyglots are not to be fully depended on. Dr. Pococke, who, as an Arabic scholar, Golius has said, was second to no man, has pronounced the condemna- tion of the Latin rendering of the Arabic scriptures in those great works ; and with respect to that of the Peschito, Michaelis affirms, that the author, Sionita, had " exe- cuted it with the greatest inaccuracy ; as almost every page betrays either hurry or ignorance, and not seldom both qualities united ;" while of the translation of Schaaf it may be observed, that, though not liable to this sweeping charge of inaccuracy, it is not sufficiently idiomatic to be a true representation of the Syrian Testament. It is with the utmost diffidence that I offer this effort in our own language. Should it assist any of my fellow-disciples in their inquiry into the meaning of the divine oracles, the solitary toil of some yenvs will not have been in vain. I have endeavoured to render the Syriac as literally as the structure of the two languages would allow ; having been desirous, not merely of translating, in the general sense of the term, but of giving, as faithfully as possible, ;i
60 PROLEGOMENA.
delineation of the peculiar cast of expression which the inspired writings possess in this venerable text of the oriental church.
On this account, as I have observed before, the ordi- nary choice enjoyed by a translator between the literal and the free method of rendering his subject could not be exercised ; since the translation here, to be of any specific utiHty to the biblical student unacquainted with Aramaic, must, of necessity, be given ad verbum. It should be such a version as that defined by a great master in the science of interpretation : " An exact image of the ori- ginal ; in which image nothing should be drawn either greater or less, better or worse, than the original ; but, so composed, that it might be acknowledged as another original itself. It follows, that a translator should use those words, and those only, which clearly express all the meaning of the author, and in the same manner as the author." * And this has been humbly but strenuously attempted in the present undertaking, both with regard to the grammatical signification of words, and, as far as possible, their collocated order. It need not be remarked, that such a plan would not admit of an artificial elegance of style ; after the manner, for example, of Castellio's Latin Testament. Had the individual now writing been ambitious of any thing of this kind, he must have sought for some more appropriate document on which to make the essay ; for the task, which it has been his sacred solace as well as labour to fulfil, prohibited even a para- phrastic expression ; and demanded that verbal faithful- ness to the original, that scrupulous parsimony and care- ful pondering of words, that tenacitas verborum cum per- spicuitate sententitE, which St. Augustine so commends in the unpolished Itahc version ;f that determination, in
* Ernesti. f AuGusTiNus De Doclrina Chrisliana, lib. xi.
ANCIENT TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 61
short, to translate literally, not diffusively ; to employ such words, and those all in meaning, number, and collo- cation, as would best portray a true copy of the original ; and, following the principle laid down by Morus, so to exhibit the author's thoughts in our own language, as to make it apparent, that, had he himself used our language, he would have expressed himself just as the translator has done.* But, when we apply such a principle to the ren- dering of the TRUE SAYINGS OF GoD, wc may well say, with the profoundest awe, '* Who is sufficient for these things?"
* Morus, Dissert. De Discrimine Sennus et Significationis in Jnterpretando.
62 PROLEGOMENA.
PART II. SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES.
The Syrian canon of the New Testament comprises three parts, — the Gospels ; the Acts, or Histories, of the Apostles ; and the Epistles. The Gospels, as intro- ducing the other portions of the sacred volume, occupy a natural position in the archives of the covenant of grace. They exhibit a history, communicated by the Holy Spirit himself, of that vast transaction by which eternal life has been recovered to us by Him " who was dehvered for our offences, and raised again for our justification." But they are more than history, even though inspired. They are a constituent part of a divine document, which not only recounts the cost and manner of our redemption, but sets forth, as well, the mind, the purposes, and pro- mises of a reconciled God to his redeemed creatures ; a covenant writing, which the hand of inspiration has indited, sealed, and made over to our world, to attest the reality of our ransom by Christ, and to assure the behever of his true and inviolable right to immortality.
The book of the Acts was written by St. Luke, and probably about the year 61. It is a continuation of the Gospel narrative in such particulars as relate to the full opening and estabhshment of the Christian dispensation. The evangeUst did not contemplate the composition of a history of the church at large, inasmuch as he has omit- ted many of the leading events connected with the first trials and triumphs of the Christian religion, with the certainty, though not the circumstances, of which we have an acquaintance from other sources : such were the martyrdom of James the Less, the persecutions which
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. 63
rendered necessary the exhortations delivered to the Pales- tinian Christians in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the earliest Missionary labours in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the conversion of the Edessenes, the foundation of the church in Rome, and other primary transactions v.hich he has deliberately omitted. Nor was it intended to be a memorial of the apostles in general, some of whom are not mentioned ; nor a complete biography of St. Paul, for which St. Luke had doubtless the most ample mate- rials : but his design was to show how the divine pur- poses of salvation were unfolded after the ascension of the Redeemer, in the full ushering in of the evangelic dispensation by the advent of the Holy Spirit, and the inauguration of the Gentiles to the fellowship and pri- vileges of the church ; a design which gives, it will be perceived, a completeness to the narrative commenced in the Gospels at the nativity of the incarnate Word, and carried down to the consummation of his atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world. We find in the developement of this narrative a succession of impressive specimens of the labours of the apostles and first evangelists ; and, incident- ally, the normal principles of the Christian ecclesiastical polity. We shall read the book of the Acts with greater advantage by keeping these objects of the writer in mind. In the Epistles of the New Testament the preaching of the apostolic time is perpetuated to our own and to all future ages. Though dead, the first commissioned am- bassadors of Christ still speak to us, and in words which the Holy Ghost teacheth. By the dispensation of the truth committed to them, the unsearchable riches of the Son of God were to be announced to the nations ; and " all men " on earth, and the principalities in heaven, to be given to see the mystery of the true and holy fellow- ship of men enlightened, sanctified, ennobled, and made happy in the salvation of God. (Eph. iii. 8 — 11.) In
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their writings is the divine righteousness revealed from faith to faith. The inexhaustible treasure is here, from which all succeedino; teachers of the church are to be perfected, and thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
" Hither as to their fountain other stars Repair, and in their golden urns draw light."
In approaching the apostolical epistles we must each bring the spirit and disposition of the Christian disciple. We must read with prayer for divine illumination and the grace of faith, by the exercise of which the truth which is alone able to make us wise to salvation shall be substantiated in our own experience. Let me say, then, in the counsel-words of a pastor of another land : " Consider, Christian, these holy epistles as if they were written to thee ; and seek in them, as the first and purest sources, the instruction and edification which thou canst find no where else in so high a measure. Here are the epistles of the Lord ; yea, much rather, here is the Holy Spirit himself thy Teacher, and he teaches the great reality of redeeming love, with all which can illumine thy understanding, and make thy heart great and worthy."
THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.
Written, probably from Corinth, about the fourth year of Nero, a. d. 58. The church in Rome, though at that time of recent formation, was thriving fast in num- bers and rehgious excellence. Yet, composed of believ- ing Jews and evangelized Gentiles, they needed to be confirmed in the great distinctive truths of the gospel, so as to be preserved from the incipient heresies of the age, and especially the error of the Judaizers, who wished to blend with the Christian system the observances of Mo- saism. In the following review I have abstained from a too minute analysis, as this part of the volume would
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. 65
be speedily enlarged into a disproportionate and unpro- fitable amplitude. The numbers denote the divisions of the Syrian church lessons as in the text throughout.
1. Inscription. The true apostle himself first obe- dient to the call of grace, then consecrated for the mani- festation of that gospel, which, completing the truth partially made known in the Old Testament, unfolds to the world a full revelation of its Saviour. Peace and grace the inheritance of the church.
Christianity already conspicuous at Rome, though no apostle seems as yet to have visited the city. (Acts ii. 10 ; xviii. 2.) St. Paul's interest in the welfare of the disciples, and his earnest desire to be among them for their edification : (Acts xix. 21 :)
2, 3. And for the testimony of the gospel in the me- tropolis of the world : inasmuch as the gospel makes known the way of salvation to man, whether Jew or Gen- tile, and reveals the terms of a sinner's justification be- fore God. Mankind at large, sinning against the internal convictions of truth, are under the condemnation of their divine Judge. This unfaithfulness to primitive truth fol- lowed and punished, in the case of the Gentiles, by judi- cial blindness, infatuation, and abandonment to every species of depravity.
4. Hence the knowledge, whether of the Gentile phi- losopher, or (especially of) the Jewish doctor, instead of exempting the possessor of it from the penalty due to unre- pented sin, must increase the weight of vengeance when the long-suffering of the just Governor of the universe shall have given place to the era of retribution. Thus the Gentile, who, though destitute of a written revelation, has an interior law in his conscience which he habitually vio- lates, and the Jew, who has received a record of the divine will and dares to disobey it, are equally liable to wrath ; because it is not the mere knowledge of the law, but obe-
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dience to it, that can render us approvable at the supreme tribunal.
5. That the Gentiles were thus responsible, though not then endowed with the written law, shown from the manifest stirrings of a principle within them which prompted many of them to conduct conformable with the precepts of the law ; by the sentiment of conscience, which has always reference to a rule, and by their mutual praise or condemnation of one another's manner of life.
[This interior law is here represented, not as having been ascertained by the unaided intellect of the Gentile world, proving their independence of the necessity of a direct communication of truth from God, but as having been " written upon their hearts," that is, divinely com- municated ; in itself a revelation, made originally to the patriarchs, (Genesis,) and perpetuated by the general operation of the blessed Spirit (Gen. vi. 3) through the virtual mediation of the all-redeeming Logos. (John i. 9, 10.)]
But if the Gentile, with his great disadvantages, is thus shut up to judgment, what shall the end be of the Jew who even boasts of his pre-eminent privileges, and lives in deliberate transgression ? Religious privileges in them- selves, instead of necessarily saving those invested with them, will only make the condemnation of the disobedient the more tremendous.
6. Not that the apostle would depreciate the true worth of Israel's privileges : for, though true religion invariably holds its throne within us, the externals of churchman- ship, without an interior principle of spiritual life, hav. ing nothing in them of the essence of rehgion ; and though on this account the ecclesiastical prerogatives of Judaism could not of themselves insure salvation ; still were they nevertheless of high and solemn value. For example : the presence of the means of grace, and the
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word which revealed the will of God, that word which remains inviolably true, not only in its promised' fulfilled to the faithful, but in its threatenings, which cannot but be executed on the unbelieving, though he be a Jew. In this must every man concur, he excepted who would blas- phemously deny the divine rectitude in the government of the world.
But, it is objected, this universal conclusion is too ab- solute ; since there may be some kinds of sin which could subserve the divine glory ; as when, for instance, the Jew made a proselyte of a Heathen by some ** pious fraud;" thus causing the truth of God to be more ex- tensively spread by means of a human he : — In this case would the Jew be rightly punished ? Undoubtedly, replies the apostle. Such conduct, when slanderously attributed to us Christians, is held up to the execration of all the good. The condemnation of sin, committed by whomsoever, and under whatever pretext, is just. Let the Jew therefore shake off the delusion, so common to his people, that natural descent from Abraham, and even investiture with the external privileges of the theo- cracy itself, can give him an impunity in sin, or an inde- pendence of the mercy which he needs in common with the most abject outcast of Heathenism.
7. The conclusion rings the knell for all human hope of acceptance with God upon the ground of impunity by privilege, or even by the merit of personal righteousness. The former is a dream, the latter an impossibility. Fallen man cannot work out a righteousness by the deeds of the law, since the clearer his perceptions of its requirements, the more convinced must he be of his inability to fulfil them.
But in this dumb despair of conscious guilt and help- lessness, the gospel is heard, preaching peace by Jesus Christ, and revealing " the righteousness of God " (the
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plan of the Deity for restoring us to righteousness ; or, the way*in which he acts in making sinners righteous) " from faith to faith." This " righteousness of God," or this method by which he proceeds in constituting sinful man righteous, is here declared to be " without law ;" that is, an arrangement distinct from law. The function of law is to acquit the innocent only, and to condemn the guilty. But the covenant of grace, witnessed by the prophets and proclaimed fully by the apostles, makes known a way by which God can be just, and yet be the justifier of the ungodly. This is by the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ, by whose propitiatory and vicarious death eternal redemption has been wrought out for us, and free justification become the privilege of all who believe in him.
This economy of faith, while it magnifies the grace of God, casts down the pride of man ; brings Jew and Gentile to the same level of grateful dependence on the same mercy, and establishes the authority of the law itself by the divine recognition of its claims in that inef- fable Atonement which is the procuring cause of our pardon ; and from the invariable fact, that with forgive- ness there is imparted a principle of spiritual life, by which a man thus reconciled to God, spontaneously aims at obedience to his commandments.
The existence of a provision for our justification being thus shown, St. Paul next proceeds to exhibit the simple condition on which it is suspended ; namely, faith in Christ. A man partially instructed in gospel truth would naturally conclude, that a basis being laid in the atonement for the pardon of the sins which are past, the terms of our acceptance with the Divine Being would require, not indeed a perfect obedience to the law, which in our fallen state is impossible ; but such an obedience, sincere, though defective, as man can give by agonizing
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and sustained effort. But the apostle shows that justi- fication, or judicial pardon, is accorded, not to him who worketh, but to him who believeth, whether he be Jew or Gentile ; a truth which he illustrates, not only from the inspired lines of David, but from the experience of Abra- ham, who, while as yet in Gentilism, believed, and was justified.
8. The history of Abraham's justification further am- plified. The grace manifested in him is infinitely free for us, and was exemplified indeed in his case on our account, as a signal light, to show us in what direction to look for mercy.
9. Results of justification : peace ; access (to the favour and presence of the Deity) ; hope of glory, warranted by the gift of the Holy Ghost, imparting the love of God ; joy, even in affliction, sanctified to our improvement ; a looking for complete salvation, to be conferred by the glorified Redeemer who had first procured it by his death ; meantime, a joyful sense of reconciliation with God.
10. Extent of the provision for man's justification. (1.) The consequences of the sin of the first Adam ex- tended to the whole race. This manifest in the universal reign of death. (2.) Yet in this relation of headship to the entire race, Adam was the type of the Messiah, the benefit of whose mediation is as extensive potentially, as the disastrous consequences of the first transgression. Thus the demerit of the first Adam brought death ; the merit of the Second wins hfe. The sentence of condem- nation was caused by a single offence, which nevertheless binds on all the penalty of death ; but the grace shown us in Christ extends to the remission of innumerable offences, and consummates its designs in Life. Through the fall of Adam was estabhshed the tyranny of death ; but through redeeming grace, they who become its sub- jects already triumph over death, and are destined to
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reign in a glorious immortality. Not only are the bene- fits of the atonement virtually co-extensive with the ra- vages of natural evil upon earth, but they are in them- selves infinitely superior to the loss we suffered through the primitive transgression.
11. The gospel directly opposed to Antinomianism. We have died by sin ; how, then, can we expect life by continuing in it ? Our very baptism, symbolizing as it does our interest and participation in the death of Christ, that death which had been rendered necessary through sin, admonishes us to regard the latter with instinctive and immutable abhorrence ; while, in another aspect, it reminds us that, risen with Christ, our congenial element is no longer sin, from which death is inseparable, but holiness and life in the kingdom of grace and of glory.
For if as believers we have a oneness with Jesus in his death, we have a oneness also with him in his resurrec- tion.
Besides, the Redeemer's death, in which we whom he then represented also died, has not only thus atoned for sin by realizing the penalty thereof, but, in its moral effects, works in us a death to it. Thus, as the servant when dead is no longer under the authority of his master, so we, having died to sin, can no longer be enslaved by it. These principles are followed, after the manner of the apostle, by a powerful series of exhortations and appeals.
12. Man considered out of Christ is hopelessly de- praved, and irretrievably condemned ; the moral law, not- withstanding his sinful inabihty to keep it, having a full claim on his obedience, and being sanctioned with penal- ties to which the sins of every hour render him the more heavily liable. But, united to Christ by faith, he is here said to have died to the law ; that is, he has been set free from its penalty or curse, and is now no longer in
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. /I
servitude to it, as an institution which prescribes the terras of his justification.
Thus personal faith in the Redeemer changes our status in relation to the divine government ; but besides this, it is accompanied by an internal renovation, the newness of a life consecrated to the service of a reconciled God.
But this emancipation from the law extends only to its penalty and to its obligations as a means of justification. It is still recognised as a rule of conduct of intrinsic and immutable sanctity and goodness. Applied in its spirit- ual perfection to the conscience, as the apostle shows by a vivid personification of an awakened, but as yet Christless, penitent, it renders us painfully sensible of the obliquities of the mind as well as of the outward conduct, and con- vinces us of sin within and without, but does not, and cannot, reveal the way of salvation. This is the pre- rogative of the gospel.
13. [If we may take the term *'mind" as synony- mous with '* spirit;" (compare the Syriac, 1 Thess. v. 23 ; Gal. vi. 18;) "the mind" and "the flesh" may be considered here as distinguishing the regenerate from the unregenerate state. (John iii. 6, 7; Gal. v. 10 — 25.)] The apostle now describes the blessedness of the man who, in the reception of the gospel, finds the liberty of the children of God ; that liberty procured by the mis- sion and work of the incarnate Son, and an introduc- tion into which is attended by peace of conscience, spi- ritual life, the fruit of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, whose presence is the pledge of a perfect consummation and bliss for the faithful, both in body and soul for ever.
14. The regenerate, as being trained for the fruition of this glorified immortality, are now in a condition of spiritual discipline. They are the pupils of a divine Teacher, even the Spirit of truth, who has created, and is maturing within them, the dispositions that belong
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to the filial relation to tlie Deity into which they have been admitted by adopting grace. Of this relation they have an internal consciousness ; the Spirit bearing witness Mith their spirits that they are the children of God, and heirs because sons. In the prospect of their great inhe- ritance, the afflictions of time become inconsiderable, while the Spirit of faith enables the believer not only to anticipate his own deliverance from sorrow, but to enter into the import of the prophetic intimations of a coming era, wlien the universe at large shall be one scene of repose and felicity.
The gracious work of the Holy Ghost in our sanctifica- tion is further unfolded in the assistance he gives us in prayer.
15. Characteristics and privileges of the saved. They love God ; they are conformed to Christ ; they realize the saving purposes of the unchangeable Jehovah ; they are such as he designed to glorify, they having obeyed his call and received justification. In this blessed state (their fidelity being always imphed) they may, with the utmost confidence, expect the endless joys which have been obtained by the mediatorial death of the unspared Son. What adverse power shall triumph against the om- nipotence which is at work to save them ? Who shall separate them from the love of a covenant God ?
But in proportion to the excellency of the privileges of believers, was the distress felt by the apostle on behalf of his Hebrew kindred, who, through unbehef, are accursed from Christ, and for whose salvation he could himself become a sacrifice.
16. For while the Gentiles, for the possibility of whose salvation he had at first to argue, had, by their obedience to the call of the gospel, become an elect people of the Lord ; the Jews, notwithstanding their ancient preroga-
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SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. 73
tives, by being disobedient to tlie heavenly calling, had been rejected and made reprobate.
Meantime, the purpose of the divine favour to Israel, as such, had not become null ; for the unbelieving Jews are Israel only in name ; mere carnal descent from Abra- ham not being saving in itself. Of the literal progeny of Abraham, and after him of Isaac, One only became the father of a consecrated people. Nor in the choice or rejection of peoples, in the carrying out of his great de- signs, can the Almighty be thought to entertain an in- equitable partiality, since he has the inalienable right to dispense his bounty (which he is under no obligation to give to any) according to the dictate of his own unerring wisdom.
17, 18. But in the contemplation of this display of mercy and of justice, we learn the necessity of simple and grateful submission to the terms of salvation enunciated in the gospel. We behold the Gentiles, at the voice of the Son of God, throwing off the blinding bandages and enslaving fetters of Heathenism, and made partakers of the privileges of the dispensation of grace : while Israel after the flesh, practically unmindful of the true nature and conditions of the Abrahamic covenant, and in earnest after the estabhshment of a self-imaged righteousness, to be won by obedience to the institutes of Mosaism, have fallen short of the inestimable prize.
19. Contrast of the legal and evangelical righteousness. The one could only be achieved by a meritorious obedi- ence to the primaeval law ; the other is inseparable from salvation by faith. This the privilege of every man, without distinction, as was proclaimed by the Old-Testa- ment prophets themselves. Faith, which has a natural developcment in confession of Christ, is preceded by, and dependent on, the manifestation of divine truth to the mind through the gospel ; which, in the purpose of God,
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is to be made known, not to Israel only, but to the be- nighted races of Gentilism.
20. But it must be observed, that the rejection of Israel has never been total ; because even already a part of them had believed. Nor is the rejection of that people iinal or irreversible : for the mediatorial reign of the com- mon Saviour places them, like all the other families of mankind, in a state of rehabilitation ; and their literal conversion to Christianity is one of the certainties of the future. Meantime, the light of the gospel, which had waned away from the unbelieving Jews, had arisen on the Gentiles, to whom their coming restoration will be the means of yet greater advantage.
21. Even now the spectacle of the reprobation of so many of this once-favoured people, is full of impressive interest to believers, as an intelligible admonition to humility and watchfulness ; while the study of these dealings of the Almighty with our redeemed world, pre- senting as they do a solemn exhibition of his wisdom, rectitude, and mercy, must produce in the thoughtful the profoundest emotions of admiration and gratitude.
22. Practical exhortations founded on the preceding doctrines. Self-consecration to God. The experience and exemphfication of renewing grace. Unanimity and co-operation for the common profit. Love to the breth- ren, sympathy, kindness, placableness. Beneficence to be shown even to enemies.
23. Submission to secular government. An honest and honourable deportment in hfe. Fulfil the spirit of the moral law in practical benevolence.
24. 25. Be in earnest to be saved from all sin. Be tolerant one of another as to minor difi'erences of opinion and observance ; and be seriously careful of making these differences an occasion or hinderance to true Chris- tian progress.
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. /D
26. "We are bound to observe this mutual forbearance, even should it demand self-denial, thus proving our- selves the true disciples of Jesus. These exhortations to mutual forbearance and brotherly communion, obligatory on Christians through all time, had a special bearing on the circumstances of the Roman church, consisting as it then did of converted Jews and Gentiles. With an eye to this state of things, and to prevent the evil effects of national prejudices, the apostle points both parties to Jesus Christ as the centre of their union, and affirms, that his personal ministry on earth, though confined to the Jews, did, nevertheless, (by calling into existence the Christian church originally composed of converted Jews, aud appointing of their number his ministers and apos- tles for the evangelization of the Gentiles,) lay the basis for the fulfilment of the promise to the patriarch Abra- ham, that in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed. Thus the Jew has a claim on the respect of his Gentile brother of no ordinary power, while the Gen- tile can demonstrate his joint interest with the Jew in the privileges and blessings of redemption.
27. The apostle expresses his personal esteem for the brethren at Rome, and enters into certain details on his own ministerial movements, and his projected visit to themselves.
28. The commendation of the deaconess, who brings the document. Various salutations, counsels, and encou- ragements. The epistle concludes with a solemn and beautiful doxology and benediction.
THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS.
A CHURCH had been founded by St. Paul, in Corinth, the highly civihzed, but depraved, metropolis of Achaia, about the year 51. (Acts xviii.) This first epistle was written about six years after, from the city of Ephesus.
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1. lutroduction. Unity and blessedness of the saints. The graces of the church, a subject of thankfulness to the apostle, and of hope for futurity ; yet were they in peril of suffering loss by a tendency to partisanship and schism. St. Paul disclaims the homage of a party.
2, 3. Christ crucified, — that theme of opprobrium to the Jew, and of contempt to the Gentile, — the great sub- ject of apostohc preaching ; the rallying-word of the faithful. The world is scandalized by the cross, and the church saved by it. The simplicity of the apostle's preaching contrasted with its mighty effects, demonstrates a divine presiding power, which wields the gospel as its instrument for human salvation. The Christian theo- logy, however, is replete with the highest mysteries of wisdom ; they were given by revelation to the apostles, and communicated by them to the disciples, according to their capacity and advancement in the spiritual life.
4. But the differences and divisions which reigned among the Corinthians, had restrained St. Paul from in- doctrinating them with the higher teachings of the faith. He remonstrates with them. The true foundation had been laid by his ministry, but it was possible an unworthy and perishable superstructure might be reared upon it by others.
5. The guilt and punishment of interfering with the completion of the spiritual temple. Humihty and self- distrust inculcated. The folly of sectarian contractedness of mind, when all the intellect of the church, and the entire provisions of the covenant of grace, are intended for our profit in common. The true point of view in which the apostles would be regarded : all their faculties were derived from, and dependent upon, Christ; they themselves were but the servants and stewards of the Lord, and solemnly aUve to their great responsibiUty.
C. Ilcncc, to have their names made the mere ensigns
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. //
of party, could not but be grievous to tliem. Such dis- tinction no part of their destiny. Their experience was that of abasement and suffering. He reminds them of these truths from a principle of parental affection.
7, 8. After speaking of the mission of Timothy, and of his own contemplated visitation, the apostle proceeds to his judgment of a notorious cause of scandal in the church at Corinth, in the fact, that a member of it had contract- ed marriage with his own mother-in-law. The apostolic sentence upon this offender. An earnest exhortation to the church, redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, to cleanse itself from moral defilement ; and, without affecting a misanthropic seclusion from human society in general, to discountenance, nevertheless, the irregular conduct of lax professors, by entirely abstaining from communion with them.
0. Adjudicature and decision of their occasional differ- ence, to be sought in the courts of the church, rather than at the Heathen tribunals. Competency of the church to arrange these matters. These quarrels were disgraceful to themselves, and a cause of scandal in the eyes of the world ; inasmuch, too, as they involved injustice on one side, they compromised the religion of the parties engaged in them, and endangered their very salvation. Yet, the faithful warning given here is joined with the encouragement to aspire to a more hopeful state, from the consideration of what grace had already effected in some of them.
10. Against sensuality: — a most solemn exhortation.
1 1 . Counsels respecting the married life. While the position of the church at that time rendered celibacy not inexpedient, the marriage-bond already subsisting, though between Christian and Heathen, was to be regarded as inviolate.
A Hebrew convert should not be required to renounce the external prerogatives of the Abrahamic vocation, nor
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a Gentile to conform to the peculiarities of Judaism. The essence of reUgion does not exist in these things ; neither is it identified with secular freedom or servitude, as such. The slave and the freeman, if numbered with the saved, are on one moral elevation as the ransomed servants of Christ.
12. The advices relating to celibacy and marriage are here amplified, and apphed to specific cases.
13, 14. We are to regard the conscientious scruples of our fellow-disciples, even though it shall demand of us the exercise of habitual self-denial. This principle is exemplified with respect to the feeble-minded view which some took of eating of the flesh of animals slaughtered at the Heathen altars. This, though in itself a matter of indifference, might nevertheless exercise a perverting effect on the conscience of the weak, so as even to lead to their final undoing. Alarming intimation of the power of human influence, which in such instances may render even redemption itself of no avail ; hence the reckless ia these matters are in danger of sinning at once against the soul and its Saviour.
St. Paul is led to assert, against the detractions of an adversary at Corinth, the validity of his apostleship, and his right to the temporal support which is due from the church to those who serve it in the ministry ; but a right that, in the case of the Corinthians, he had reasons for placing in abeyance. But to this forbearance he attached no merit : for he preached the gospel in obedience to an inward conviction of obhgation, in the fulfilment of which he laid himself out in manifold efforts and appliances to gain men of every class ; while, in securing his own salvation and obtaining the crown of Ufe, he used the most strenuous effort, and submitted to every sacrifice.
15. The subject of meats sacrificed to idols resumed. In exhorting these Christians of Corinth to abstain from
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participating in whatever would give countenance to the idolatry of the masses around them, St. Paul shows that their privileges of baptism and the Lord's supper would not (as seems to have been inculcated by some false teachers) counteract the ill effect, either in themselves or others, of their having fellowship with sin ; for example, attending an idol temple, and joining there in a feast on a sacrifice offered to the demon gods. To prove this, he reminds them of the case of the Israelites, baptized with Moses in the cloud and the sea, and partakers of the spiritual bread and the water of the mystic rock ; but who, for participating with idolaters, were left to perish in the desert. Hence they were to be careful, and to confide in the Lord for strength to resist temptation.
16, 17. Be entirely separate from idolatry. To partici- pate knowingly in its observances, is to be identified with it. In this case our communion with Christ is at an end. The two systems cannot coalesce. Meat offered for sale might be bought without questioning whether it had been slain by the knife of the Heathen priest. In like man- ner, food spread before you at a domestic feast might be eaten. But where a notification was given that the one or the other had been consecrated at the altars, the Chris- tian could not dare to partake, were it only for the sake of others. We are not to insist on our own liberty, where others may be benefited, and God glorified, by our self- denial. This was the apostle's personal rule, which he recommended to their own imitation.
Here begins a series of instructions on certain pro- prieties in their public religious services, which had been more or less infringed among them. The first relates to the personal appearance of those who prayed or prophe- sied in the assembly. The men had begun to officiate with the head covered with a cap or turban, or veiled with a tallithi after the manner then recently introduced
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into the synagogue, and continued among the Jews to our own time. The women, on the contrary, who (during those years which intervened between the first opening of the gospel dispensation and the completing of the provisions for the perpetual edification of the church, in the full canon of inspired scripture and the estabhshment of a regular ministry) were, in common with men, made recipients of the prophetical gifts of the Holy Ghost, and spoke as moved by him, now prayed or prophesied with the head uncovered, thereby violating the long-settled notions of propriety, and exhibiting a resemblance in this particular either to persons of immoral life, or to the priest- esses in the Heathen temples. But this unusual habit was not only counter to the received usages of society, but to a beautifid symbolism of nature itself. The veiled brow was also the emblem of the virtuous and honourable subjection of the wife to the husband. For the divine law of subordination by which man is sub- jected to Christ, and Christ himself, in the mediatorial economy, to God, gives the husband a relative superiority to the wife. The adulteress was punished by being de- prived of the tresses of her head. But the Christian woman who unveiled her head in public, reduced herself, in the eyes of the Heathen, to the same appearance of dishonour. But recognising the principle of subordina- tion to her husband, she should be veiled in the assem- bly, having the token of power or authority on her head ; and that not merely from acquiescence with human custom, but religiously, and in the faith of unseen spec- tators, in the presence of celestial spirits in the temple of the Lord. (Heb. i. 14 ; Isai. vi. ; Eccles. v. 6 ; 1 Peter i. 12; Rev. iv. 4 — 6.) This relative subordination does not imply an essential or natural inferiority in the wife ; for both husband and wife are equally dependent on the divine mercy.
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Another cause of deterioration arose from tlieir irregular and unwarrantable practices in the celebration of the Lord's supper. Though assembled under the same roof for this expressive manifestation of Christian unity, they allowed the spirit of partisanship to unfold itself in the formation of sections or coteries, (polagiithe, **dindings,") each of which communicated apart from the others. At the same time the sacrament of the holy supper was profaned, by being joined with, or made the conclusion of, a social feast, each person bringing his own viands to the place of assembly ; by which practice it often occurred that the poorer members sat in hunger, while the rich were enjoying a plentiful repast. [Observe the reference in this paragraph to the Christian Sunday.]
The apostle, having rebuked this unseemly custom in decisive terms, proceeds to point out the true import of the Lord's supper. It is not an ordinary social repast, but a rite which sets forth a divinely appointed and per- petual memorial of the atoning death of the Lord Jesus, and that through all the ages of time till his advent in glory. In the bread we are to discern the Lord's body ; in the cup, the New Tetsament in his blood. The worthy improvement of this privilege will require, there- fore, a composure and thoughtfulness of mind to which the habits now reproved were altogether unfriendly. They had already felt their injurious effects, and were now earnestly warned to abandon them.
18 — 22. Those were the days of p^apio-jaara, "the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost ;" by which, as by a divine signature, the gospel dispensation was fully and finally authenticated. With these preternatural faculties of prophecy, healing, speaking, and interpretation of lan- guages, &c., several members of the congregation at Corinth had been endowed. But such gifts, in them- selves, distinct from the sanctifying graces of the Holy
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Spirit, had not been so received as to have improved the dispositions of some of the parties intrusted with their exercise. Through the infirmity of human nature they had been perverted, so as to have become the cause of self-exultation in some, and of envy in others. He who was greatly gifted despised him who had received no spi- ritual power, or one inferior to his own. Against this odious state of things St. Paul next directs his discourse. After reminding them of their debt to divine mercy, in the contrast of their former with their present state, and laying down as a principle, that the prophetic spirit was given to the church as a witness of the Messiahship and divinity of the Saviour, he shows, that as all those gifts were alike divine, being each communicated by the Holy Spirit himself; and that as they had been distributed solely according to his sovereign will, the recipients of them stood upon the same level, equally and alike obli- gated to grace. Among such, pride and self-glorification should be utterly unknown. The sinfulness of their dis- sensions on this subject became more apparent, by the consideration that these gifts had been bestowed in such a manner as to prove that the church was one body or living system, and ought therefore to have led them to cultivate oneness of spirit ; whereas, their conduct had rendered what presented the greatest motive to una- nimity, a cause of ahenation and strife. iMoreover, that very disposition of love, of which they had proved themselves so unmindful, is in its own nature more intrinsically excellent than gifts or achievements the most brilliant or ostentatious. This leads to the apostle's sublime cloge of love, with the exhortation to follow after it. And, with regard to the gifts of the Spirit, if they were emulous of them, they should desire such as would tend most effectually to the common edification. This is illustrated by a comparison between the benefits attend-
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ing discourses in the congregation in unknown languages, and the exercise of the gift of prophecy ; the latter term describing not only predictive oracles, but the oral com- munication of Christian instruction in general. Then follow rules and precepts for the better regulation of this branch of their religious services.
23. Whether from Sadducaic or Epicurean teaching, sceptical difficulties had perplexed the minds of some of the Corinthian Christians on the subject of a future resurrection of the dead. St. Paul here addresses him- self to the removal of these doubts : first, identifying the doctrine of the resurrection essentially with the gospel itself; next, affirming the incontrovertible fact of the resurrection of Jesus, and some of the physical evidences by which it had been authenticated. Thus the resurrec- tion of the dead is possible, and is already proved. If the dead cannot be raised, then Jesus cannot have risen, the gospel is a system of falsehood ; the confidence of the believer, the fidelity unto death of those who had already died in the faith, and the all-enduring constancy of living Christians, are equally in vain.
24. But Christ has risen ; and his resurrection is the pledge and exemplar of our own. He is our federal head, the new Chief of our race. His redeeming work is des- tined to abolish the reign of death brought by the trans- gression of the first Adam, and to achieve the literal restoration of immortahty. This will be the crowning act of his mediation.
25. Again: the resurrection of the human body will be but an effect of the same divine power which is already displayed in the productions of the natural world. The reviviscence of vegetable forms before our eyes, as well as the creation of animated nature, and the magnificent spheres of the heavens, at the first, all attest the existence and activity of His power to restore the wasted frame of
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man from the grave, whose will respecting it has been already so clearly revealed in the words and works recorded in the gospel. And as to the objection of the philoso- phers, that a resurrection could not be desirable, on account of the inherent incompatibihty between a spi- ritual nature, like the mind, with inert and perishable matter, the apostle shows that the bodies of the saved will be hereafter invested with such attributes of incor- ruptibleness, power, and splendour, as will render them fit companions of the sinless spirit. The believer, then fully saved, will be transformed into the likeness of the incarnate God.
Such surpassing blessedness is not only to be the por- tion of the holy dead, but of the faithful also who shall be alive at the advent of the Lord. In the steadfast expectation of these great reahties, the Christian already triumphs over death.
This whole discourse on the certainty, the nature, and the time of the final change and glorification of the saved, is dehvered with a solemn grandeur of language, possible only to a man divinely inspired.
26, 27. Directions on the contemplated bounty of the church, for the distressed Jewish Christians in Palestine. The apostle's personal movements. Counsels to fidelity, unanimity, and order. Salutations. He who loves not the Saviour, is accursed.
SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS.
This was written from Macedonia, about a year after the date of the first epistle, and was sent to Corinth by the evangehst Titus. Compare 1 Cor. xvi. 8 ; Acts xix. ; 2 Cor. i. 8; Acts xx. 1, 2.
i. The salutation of grace and peace. Devout breath- ings of a mind alive to the sorrows and consolations of
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. 85
the church. Our disciphne of grief and joy is designed to be sanctified to each other's edification. This, too, is an element in the communion of the saints.
2. Recent painful exercises in Asia. St. Paul's assur- ance of the conviction entertained by the Corinthians of his apostolic integrity, and the godly and inviolable sin- cerity of his intentions regarding them.
3. He now passes to the particular case of the oflender at Corinth, which had caused him and many of them- selves so much anxiety, and afiirms the sentence of abso- lution.
4. The progressive triumphs of the gospel through the agency of the apostolate. Results of its administration, — endless life, or perdition. Superhuman character of the work. The apostles spoke directly from God. Those to whom he was then writing, living witnesses of the divine energy attending their word.
5. The authority and qualifications for this work of divine origin. Its transcendent excellency set forth by a contrast with the ministry of the law.
6. Entirely devoted to their work, the apostles laboured to accomplish the charge graciously intrusted to them ; in giving full manifestation to that truth whose judicial concealment leaves the soul of man in hopelessness, and that because it is the gospel only which brings the know- ledge of a Saviour.
7. The true evangelist bears an inestimable treasure in an earthern vase. But the grandeur of the eiFects pro- duced by the gospel, proves so much the more clearly its divine origin. The apostles, in pursuing their great career, were conscious of the presence of their Lord to sustain and render them triumphant. Their devotion to the cause of Christ universal and unending. Their wasting labours were accompanied by the presentiment and expectation of martyrdom ; yet an interior life was
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unfolding its supremacy within them, and uplifted them already over affliction and the grave, in enabling them to identify a personal relation to eternity and glory.
8. These anticipations of immortal Hfe were attended also by a profound conviction of responsibility. The tri- bunal of Christ is before them and all men.
9. Their strenuous efforts, with these prospects, to save souls, encouraged and animated by a sense of the boundless love of Christ, as Redeemer of all men ; and of love to Him who had an illimitable right to theu' devoted service. They no longer existed for any other end. The glorious truth of the gospel now possessed them, and the God from whom it comes had commissioned them to make it manifest.
10. The true nature of the evangelic ministry, and the substance of the good tidings it makes known, stated in terms few, but solemn and comprehensive. Exhortation to the immediate and full improvement of the day of grace : and to such as were engaged in the agencies of the gospel, to a self-denying, enduring, and laborious fidelity.
11 . To the church : Show that you appreciate such a ministry. Be separate from the world. Be in earnest for the better portion, the blessedness unveiled in the promises of God ; and prove your interest in them by their sanctifying power in your life.
12. The apostle expresses the consolation which the proved repentance of the Corinthians had given him. Characteristics of genuine penitence. St. Paul's happi- ness in their full reconciliation.
13 — 1.5. Details on the contribution for the distressed saints at Jerusalem. The conduct of the iMacedonians worthy of imitation ; above all, the divine example of the Redeemer himself. The church at large to cultivate a cheerful and spontaneous beneficence. The brethren
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accredited to the Corinthians for the accompUshment of the present work of charity. Practical suggestions for carrying it into effect.
16. St. Paul now proceeds to vindicate his apostleship against certain doubts which had been propagated against it by an adverse party at Corinth. He asserts the pos- session of a judicial power to demonstrate it, which he would nevertheless prefer to keep in abeyance. In this he intimates a contrast between the dispositions of him- self and his antagonists. Corinth was within the limit of the continually widening sphere of his ministerial labours. His aim was the divine approval, and if he gloried he would glory in the Lord.
17. In the statements he was about to make he did violence to his own sense of Christian dignity, that they might be disabused of the prejudices excited against him by unworthy men, and which they could entertain only to their own spiritual disadvantage. Had his opponent preached the truth, and proved himself a genuine minis- ter of the Christian dispensation, their reception of him would have been commendable ; but even then Paul would have had the greater claim on their attachment. He held rank with the most eminent of the apostles, and had gratuitously preached the gospel at Corinth ; not only to show his own disinterestedness, but from a prin- ciple of love to them in protecting them from the rapa- city of those who would have taken advantage of the circumstance of the apostle's receiving money, to make a prey of them. Such designing deceivers are ministers of Satan.
18. St. Paul now shows, not only his equality with these Jewish disturbers of the church, but his superiority to them ; not merely in labours and sufferings, but in having received peculiar revelations, and having been made the subject of a mysterious rapture into the hea-
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venly world. In connexion with these events he men- tions some of the deahngs of divine providence and grace in the disciphne of his own soul. In alleging the evi- dences of his apostleship, he appeals to the miraculous credentials with which he had authenticated his mission among them : for he had made the same proof of his ministry at Corinth as in other churches ; dealing with them as with similar communities, with the difference that he uniformly refused to receive any thing from them.
19. In having so fully discussed this painful subject, he had laboured to create a better understanding between himself and them ; so as that, when he should visit Corinth, his intercourse with them might not be afflic- tive. Nevertheless, were the obstacles which had mili- tated against the peace of the church unremoved, he would then be constrained, by fidelity to his apostolical trust, to exercise those judicial prerogatives and powers, with which he had been supernaturally endowed, as an ambassador of the Lord. He fervently exhorts them to adopt and persevere in the better course, and pronounces upon them the plenary benediction of the new covenant.
THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS.
Compare Acts xvi. 6, cir. a.d. 53 ; Acts xviii. 23, cir. A.D. 56. The Epistle was probably written between these two dates, (compare chap. i. 6,) and from Corinth or Ephesus.
1. The inscription indicates the true source of the apostolic authority ; and the salutation, the great privilege of the church. All the faculties and blessings we have received, are to redound to the honour of the Divine Benefactor. Distress of St. Paul at the perversion of these churches to a counterfeit gospel. To tamper with the immutable truths of Christianity is to incur the divine
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. 89
anathema. The true apostle rises above the fear of man, and acts as the legate of the Almighty.
2, 3. History of events which prove that St. Paul had not derived his ministerial powers from the other apostles, nor exercised them in fealty or subordination to them. Hence, his preaching, like theirs, conveyed a direct com- munication from the divine Head of the church, and bore a character of the highest authority.
4. The consequent folly and guilt of the Galatians in swerving from truth so divinely authenticated.
5. The matter being so brought before them, the apos- tle, having proceeded to unfold more at large the true doctrine of the justification of man before God, expostu- lates with them on account of their unfaithfulness to it. Justification by faith, which has been the way of salva- tion for lost man from the beginning, exemplified in the case of Abraham. There is no other way of obtaining pardon ! The broken law of God accurses all who have not taken refuge in the redeeming work of Him who was made a curse for us.
6. The intermediate or ectromatal dispensation of Moses did not nullify the covenant of grace (made in effect with Adam after the fall, and) ratified with Abra- ham ; but served to prepare the way for the more full developement of that covenant in the gospel day.
7. A survey of our glorious privileges as the adopted sons of God, through Christ, sets in a stronger light the infatuation and wickedness of losing them by lapsing from the faith.
8. 9. Apostolic reproof. Allegorical contrast between the servile institute of Moses, and the free and ennobling dispensation of the gospel. Exhortation to fidelity to the privileges of the latter. Circumcision, the signature of Judaism, involves an obligation to the observance of all its peculiar requirements.
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10, 11. The gospel, the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, who actuates the true believer in Christ, makes him free from the depraved propensities of the carnal mind, and sanctifies his dispositions and hfe. A test of one's own Christianity.
The duty of mutual care, combined with personal vigi- lance and humihty. The hearer of the gospel is to con- tribute towards the support of the preacher. Solemn motives to beneficence in general, and kindness to our fellow-disciples in particular. The sum : all externals are adventitious ; and in and by themselves wortliless, because they cannot effect the interior renovation needed by our nature itself. The atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ is an imperishable reality ; and the basis of the believer's final, exclusive, and triumphal confidence. That all-sur- rendering confidence sanctifies, and brings to the church repose and blessedness.
THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.
This is a pastoral circular, primarily intended, not only for the Christians of Ephesus, but for the Laodicean and other churches. It appears to have been written at the time of St. Paul's first captivity at Rome, (iii. 1, 13 ; iv. 1 ; vi. 20,) and dehvered at Ephesus by the evangelist Tychicus.
1. Fervid expression of affection for the church, (Acts XX. 1 7, 38,) and of gratitude to the God of their common salvation, to whom, for his eternal design of mercy, the means of its being accomplished, in the redeeming work of his Son, the measures in which it has been hitherto carried into effect in the pardon, sauctification, and in- struction of the faithful ; and in that perfect consumma- tion of good to be inherited by them in the new creation, all glory for evermore belongs. Survey of the common and ordinary experience of those who are saved ; they
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. 91
hear the gospel of Christ, they believe in him, and are thereupon renewed by the Holy Spirit.
2, 3. Such a work of grace having been begun in the history of the Ephesian beUevers, St. Paul records his prayerful anxiety for their growth in the spiritual life. The majesty and sufficiency of Christ, and his relation to the church. Review of our obligations to the mercy of which he is the administrator. How we are saved. Sal- tion entirely of grace ; provided equally for Jew and Gentile, who, in and through the one Mediator, are admit- ted alike to the advantages resulting from reconciliation with God.
4, 5. Believers, whether Jew or Gentile, form one communion, and are being builded into an eternal temple of the Deity.
The apostle now expatiates on those unfolding pur- poses of the divine mind for the evangelization and salva- tion of the Gentiles, towards the accompUshment of which he had himself been invested with the responsibi- lities of the apostleship. The designs of Jehovah for the restoration of mankind by Jesus Christ a source of perpetual instruction (not only to man upon earth, but) to the most dignified orders of the celestial world. Magnificent conceptions of our privileges in Christ, em- bodied in the sublimest strains of intercession and praise.
C. Thus called to a holy and everlasting communion with God and his saints, we are admonished to seek with diligence its realization, avoiding whatever is opposed to it. The whole economy of grace both typifies and tends to this beatific oneness. It was the object of the Re- deemer's abasement and exaltation, and the end contem- plated in all the provisions he has made for his church. \Vc are cautioned against uncertain and deceptive theories, and exhorted to cleave steadfastly to Christ, the living head of the body of the saved.
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7. An entire alteration in the moral habits of the inward and outward hfe would not fail to distinguish all of them who had really received the gospel, from the benighted and corrupt masses of Gentilism.
8, 9. Admonitions and exhortations grounded on this principle.
10. Relative duties : husbands and wives. A won- drous and affecting view of the union existing between the Redeemer and his church by the analogy of this rela- tionship. Parents and children. Masters and servants.
1 1 . Apostolic exhortation : the alarum, the foe, the armour needed, the manifold prayer with which the con- flict is to be urged. Intercession requested for the writer. The mission of Tychicus. Benediction.
THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS.
A.D. 62. Towards the close of the apostle's captivity at Rome.
1. Salutation to the ministers and members of the church, whose spiritual welfare was the daily theme of the writer's supplication and thanksgiving, while his prayer for their progress and fruitfulness in true piety was animated by the conviction that their perseverance and full salvation were in accord with the purpose of God.
2. Adverting to his own condition as a prisoner, he shows that the cause of the gospel was even then being advanced rather than retarded by his captivity. The word of salvation was made known more widely. Preach- ers had become numerous ; and though some acted with sinister purposes, yet the very annunciation of the truth was a cause of rejoicing. As to himself, he contemplated the alternative of life or martyrdom, then pending in his case, with a tranquil expectation of that higher beati-
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tude to which death would conduct him, or of days prolonged on earth in the service of his Lord. But feeling persuaded that his life would be spared for the further edification of the church, he anticipates the time when he should see them again. He exhorts them mean- time to aim at a conformity of conduct with the gospel, and to united and fearless efforts for its advancement.
3. The self-denying spirit of love and humility in which this duty was to be carried out, is illustrated by divine views of the voluntary abasement and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of his subsequent exaltation.
4. The grace which would enable them to attain this state of character was already being given them by the inworking of the Holy Spirit ; for their own salvation, therefore, and for that of the benighted multitudes around them, the Christians of Phihppi were to be prac- tically in earnest.
5. St. Paul now cautions them against the Judaizing error which was producing such deadly effects in many of the early churches ; and exhibits in his own experience and history an example ofi entire abnegation of all confi- dence in personal advantages, or religious prerogatives and observances, and of a perfect trust in the meritorious work of the redeeming God, and a full surrender of him- self to be conformable to him in life, in death, and in the resurrection to come.
6. The apostle's ceaseless effort after perfection. He is enabled to propose his own conduct for the imitation of his fellow-believers. Portraiture of carnal professors ; their terrible doom. The true teaching of the Holy Spi- rit will excite in us all aspirations after entire sanctifica- tion. The faithful are members of a supernal commu- nion, and have the prospect and presentiment of a glorified immortality.
Hence the present duties of cheerful perseverance.
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unanimity, and mutual help ; of thankfulness, self-pos- session, and prayerful dependence on God, with which is connected the promise of a perpetual and all-sustaining peace.
7. ReHgion elevates and ennobles us. "We are called to the attainment of high moral excellence. St. Paul then speaks of the practical love of the Phihppians in ministering to his necessities, and concludes the epistle with thanksgiving to God, and benedictions on his church.
THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS.
By comparing chap. iv. 3, 15, with Eph. vi. 22, Col. iv. 17, Philem. 10, and Col. iv. 9, it becomes apparent that, like the foregoing, this Epistle was written at the time of St. Paul's captivity in Rome.
1. Inscription and salutation. Devout feelings of the apostle on having become acquainted through Epaphra with the spiritual prosperity which had attended their reception of the gospel. \
2. The habitual prayer of St. Paul for their advance- ment in knowledge, wisdom, rectitude, and beneficence ; with a strength to do and to endure, and with minds pervaded with eucharistic gratitude for the inestimable blessings and hopes of Messiah's kingdom. The God- head, majesty, and mediatorial sufiiciency of the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. The Christians of Colosse, who knew by experience his power to save, are exhorted to persevere in the faith of the gospel, with the ministration of which the writer had been intrusted, and which, while it dispels the igno- rance of God that had overclouded the mind in past ages, makes known to us the riches of his grace, and brings to the believer an especial interior revelation of the
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Saviour, and, with him abiding in the soul, the assurance of future blessedness. To bring every human being to the participation of this good, the great design of the apostolic institute. St. Paul's concern for their salvation in particular, and for the spiritual prosperity of their own and the sister church of Laodicea.
4. Exhortations and cautions to the same effect. He who is united abidingly to Christ, is independent of the world ; for in him the only Saviour is a divine plenitude of good. That Saviour has satisfied the claims of justice for us, and triumphed over our foes.
5. These Gentile believers are hereupon exhorted to be on their guard against the devices of the false teachers around them, and against any doctrines which seduce them to the practice of the formalities of Judaism, the Platonic homage to demons, or the useless mortifications of the Pytliagoreans, all of which were adverse to the spirit and design of the gospel revelation.
6. 7. Our experimental interest in Christ will be proved in the heavenward tone of our dispositions. The re- newed life tends upward. If we have life in Christ our affections will make their home on high, because He is there. It is this which makes true piety so inexplicable to the man of mere sensualism. But at the last advent the mystery will be solved. What the unbeliever now denies, because he cannot see it, will then have visual demonstra- tion. But every one who has this solemn hope of glori- fication with the sons of God will be anxious to be made altogether meet for it by being cleansed from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, and being renewed in the moral image of the Lord. Practical exhortations to mutual love, and efforts for the common edification ; to the fulfil- ment of the relative duties ; to prayer and intercession ; and to watchful endeavour for the conversion of the unsaved.
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FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS.
The gospel was first preached in the city of Thessa- lonica about a.d. 52 or 53. See Acts xvii. This is considered the earliest of St. Paul's Epistles. It was written when the church, then but recently founded, was suffering persecution.
1. Exordium. Their conversion and steadfastness a perpetual cause of gratitude to the apostle and his fellow- labourers. Retrospection: (1.) The experience of the flock. They had heard the divine voice in the gospel, and had obeyed. Their adherence to the truth had al- ready been the means of promoting the spread of it in the surrounding regions. (2.) The conduct of their first pastors among them, demonstrative of their perfect sin- cerity as the avowed messengers of the Lord.
2. The effect of their reception of the gospel the same in them as in all behevers. In their case, too, a simi- larity of experience with the other early Christians, in the endurance of persecution. The hatred to Christian- ity which had been elicited in the conduct of their Gentile persecutors, appeared with still greater aggravation of guilt in that of the Jewish opposers of it in Judea. Their impending doom.
3. In knowing their exposure to the ordeal of perse- cution, St. Paul's anxiety for them had been augmented. The sending of Timothy, and the consolation afforded by the intelligence he had brought of their perseverance in the faith. He yearns to be with them himself.
4. He now reminds them that further and final perse- verance demands progression ; and exhorts them to ad- vance. Counsels tending to this, on sanctification, and purity of life, brotherly love, self-composedness, and habits of industry.
5. As from the precincts of the grave, the hand of
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. 9/
inspiration then points some of them who had been be- reaved, to the glorious immortaHty to be enjoyed by the risen dead in Christ, and by transformed believers, at a day which is swiftly approaching. The rapture of the saints at the coming of the Lord distinctly foretold.
Theorizing on the time of this great event, of infi- nitely less importance to us than being in earnest to be ready for it. The very uncertainty of the day an addi- tional motive to vigilant effort. The provisions of the gospel insure the triumph of all who are thus disposed.
6. Practical teachings to the same effect. St. Paul's sohcitude that all the disciples might become acquainted with the written word. Benediction.
SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS.
Written not long after the first letter, probably from Corinth. Though still persecuted, the church remained faithful.
1. The judgment of God in bestowing upon th^m the blessings of his kingdom proved to have been unerring, in their manifested fidelity, charity, and patience under persecution and affliction. But while they could look forward to the eternal repose of the saints, their adver- saries were already condemned to a fiery retribution, to be inflicted at the coming of Christ to be glorified in the consummation of his saving work in the finally faithful. Such expectations excite to prayer.
To remove erroneous impressions regarding the sup- posed nearness of the second advent, the apostle shows that before that great event there would be unfolded in the church a process of apostasy, and the tyrannical reign of an antichristian power, whose establishment would be effected by Satanic influence, and whose de- struction would require an express interposition of the
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Almighty. Portraiture of tlie papal antichrist. The perilous state of such as adhere to him. Those who are wilHng to shght the truth must fall under the power of error, and be undone.
St. Paul encourages the Thessalonians to persevere. He asks their prayers for himself and his associates in the ministry. He cautions them against an error in practice which some among them had fallen into, of re- laxing their attention to the ordinary duties of life, on the supposition that the day of judgment was impending. He reminds them of his own example when among them, and directs that the disorderly and idle should be visited with salutary discipline. Yet discipline was to be wielded in the spirit of love ; final excision from the church being regarded by the apostle as the last of earthly calamities. The reclaiming and restoration of offenders should be ever kept in view. (2 Cor. ii. 6 — 8 ; Gal. vi. 1, 2.)
THE FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY.
Compare Acts xiv. 5, 6, xvi. 1 — 3 ; 2 Tim. i. 5 ; iii. 15; 1 Tim. iv. 14; i. 18; iii. 14; 2 Tim. i.
This epistle was probably written from Macedonia, about A.D. 65, some short time after St. Paul's Hbera- tion from Rome.
1 . One great purpose of his having been established at Ephesus was the preservation of the church from false doctrine, and especially from the superstitious teachings of the Judaizers.
The law which is fulfilled in love levels its terrors only against the wicked ; and, regarded according to its true nature and design, is a good invaluable. This is the view which is taken of it in the gospel, of which the writer had been appointed an apostle. The matchless
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mercy of God towards all men in Christ, and towards Paul in particular, who, according to his subjective per- ceptions of the evil of sin, had been the guiltiest of the race. The grace thus abounding to the chief of sinners calls for the praises of eternity.
The apostle in proceeding to deliver his charge refers to the prophetical designation of Timothy to the evan- gelical office, as an encouragement to the faithful dis- charge of its mighty duties. He must expect to have to maintain a conflict with opposers.
2. Prayer precedes all duties. All men may pray, and be prayed for, because all are redeemed. This is the testimony of the gospel. The simple and tranquil dis- positions friendly to prayer are to be carefully cherished. Counsels to this effect, to men and women.
3. Maxims on the qualifications of true bishops, and ministers. Sanctity and glory of the church. The mystery of the Incarnate God. Characteristics of a pre- dicted apostasy from the first faith. (Compare 2 Thess. ii. 3 — 11.) Exhortations and encouragements.
4. On personal conduct. Study ; read in order to teach. Cidtivate the intellectual and spiritual life. To retain his gift by using it. Great motive to diligence, the salvation of himself and of his hearers.
Church administration. Conduct to the flock, respect- ful, affectionate, and pure. Regulations regarding the as- sistance of impoverished widows. Precepts to be observed in the supervision of the presbyters. Their subsistence ; adjustment of complaints ; open reproof of the culpable. Caution in appointment to the ministry. A word on the preservation of his physical health.
5. Discrimination of character necessary. Duties of Christian servants. Beware of antinomian teachers. The intrinsic and permanent wealth of true religion. Delusive snare of worldly wealth ; the peril of such as devote
F 2
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themselves to the sole pursnit of it. Timothy earnestly exhorted to a nobler career,
6. In words of extraordinary solemnity these inspired counsels are made binding upon the conscience, in the name of the supreme Ruler, and the coming Judge. The evangelist to see that his administration be blame- less, impartial, and admonitory to the rich as well as to the poor ; thus fulfilling the trust confided to him, and being vigilant against every theory and system which would lead to the betrayal of it.
THE SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY.
Rome, a.d. 66, some weeks before St. Paul's mar- tyrdom.
1. The benediction. Affectionate expression of per- sonal sympathy and regard for Timothy, and for the memory of the sainted Eunika and Lois. This imme- diate interest in his happiness one motive to the pre- sent exhortation. True Christian ministers derive their strength from on high, and are invigorated for their work by the gift of the Holy Spirit, who endues them with power, benevolence, and the wisdom and decision neces- sary to self-government and the regulation of the church. The evangelist, therefore, was to bear up under any opposition ; for the supporting strength which would be faithfully given him was that of the omnipotent Saviour. St. Paul had known this by experience, and was without fear as to futurity. Timothy, then, was to be mindful, in the first place, to adhere to the fixed principles of the Christian doctrine. Episodically the apostle laments the defection of some disciples known to them both, and commends the steadfast friendship of Onesiphorus, with fervent breathings for the everlasting salvation of himself and household. Secondly, he was to make provision for
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the perpetuation of the true doctrine in Ephesus by the investiture of rightly qualified men with the office of teaching it.
2. Christian ministers should be exempted from secu- lar affairs, and be supported by the church. Yet their calling is not one of indolence, but of hardships. The resurrection of the King Messiah the rallying truth which animates, directs, and fortifies the zeal of his ser- vants for the salvation of the church. As he lives, the faithful, though martyred for him, shall Hve also ; as he reigns, a crown also awaits them. On the other hand, the reprobation of the faith-denier is equally certain. Our fidehty will make all this difference in our destiny ; the divine purposes being immutable. The preacher is to make these truths the staple material of his teaching, rather than topics of dubious and unprofitable character. Every thing in the gospel institute bears directly on sal- vation. Timothy hereupon admonished with regard to his own ministrations. To aim at the full accomplish- ment of the object for which the preaching of the gospel was appointed ; not occupying himself and his hearers with the vapid, yet mischievous, disquisitions of the Judaizers or the heretics ; but building aU his doctrine on the divinely-attested basis of revelation. This would render him a vessel or instrument fit for the service of the divine Lord of the temple.
Next, as to his personal conduct, he is exhorted to self-denial, and progression in Christian excellence ; to the maintenance of a pacific bearing and demeanour, being instructor even to the deluded and perverse. So far from being cast down by trials of this description, he is forewarned of a coming time which will be distin- guished by an unprecedented developement of wickedness, and is to be ready armed for the strife.
3, 4. St. Paul reminds him of his own experience, as
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a veteran warrior in the conflict with evil. Every ser- vant of God must be prepared for it. Timothy solemnly urged to inviolable constancy to the truth revealed in the scriptures ; — their inspiration and perfect sufficiency for Christian edification and ministerial usefulness ; — to dili- gence in preaching ; and to the putting forth of a reso- lute antagonism against every indication of the approach- ing apostasy. The apostle himself had a presentiment of the close of his own career, and a full assurance of glorification from the final Judge. He expresses an earnest desire that Timothy would visit him at Rome, (probably wishing him to be present at his last day). Forsaken by Demas, and deprived, by their various mis- sionary duties, of the presence of the other evangelists, he longed for the solace which would be afi'orded by the conversation of his well-tried friend, and the intellectual refreshment derived from the books which he asks him to bring. Caution against an adversary. Gratitude for past mercies, and an upHfting of the heart in confidence of the last victory.
THE EPISTLE TO TITUS.
This pastoral appears to have been written shortly after St. Paul's release from his first imprisonment at Rome, and, like the first to Timothy, was probably sent from Nicopolis.
1. The inscription sets forth the origin and purpose of the apostleship ; thus sealing the precepts now to be delivered with a superhuman authority.
Titus is reminded of the end for which he had been appointed to reside for a time as evangelist, or vicar of the apostle, in Crete ; namely, to give, as his properly commissioned co-adjutor, completeness to the church- order of the believers there. The qualities of a presby-
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. 103
ter stated, negatively and positively. The notoriously vicious character of the Cretans, and the insidious agen- cies of antinomian and Judaizing teachers among the early flock in that island, demanded that Titus should ordain to this charge only men remarkable for their vir- tues, wisdom, and resolute courage. In these circum- stances it behoved the evangelist himself to give in his preaching a distinguished prominence to the raoraUties of the gospel, and to urge upon the aged and the young, upon servants and subjects, the relative duties of their several stations in life.
2. This practical developement of the social virtues is a necessary consequence of the right reception of the truth as it is in Jesus. Redemption itself does not ac- comphsh its objects in us, but by dehvering us from sin, and sanctifying us to the service of God. This delight- ful transformation had already been effected in some whose former state was one of ignorance and folly, of enslavement to sin and hateful depravity ; but who were now the subjects of the Holy Spirit's regenerating work, and were hving in the enjoyment of the peace and hope of the forgiven children of God. Hence the doctrine of the natural relation of good works to true faith is incon- trovertible in itself, and indispensable as well as advan- tageous to every Christian community.
Cautions given against trivial controversies. No in- tercourse between the faithful and a confirmed heretic. Minor directions, and the concluding wishes of the friend and the apostle.
THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON.
Philemon was a Christian of Colosse. The letter was written from Rome, in the ninth year of Nero, a.d. 65.
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Commendation of Philemon's personal religion, his faith, love, and beneficence ; the knowledge of which gives the greater confidence to the writer in his interces- sion for Onesimus ; intercession for which he would not substitute apostolic command, but would ojBfer it on the behalf of the repentant and converted slave by affection- ate entreaty. The change effected in Onesimus by the renewing and adopting grace of God had rendered him a man of moral worth, and entitled him to the kind con- sideration of his once-injured and offended Master. St, Paul begs the latter to feel on that subject as he did ; pledges himself that Philemon shall lose nothing by the past misconduct of Onesimus, (though this is done not without a delicate allusion to the spiritual obligation of Philemon to himself,) and expresses his utmost trust in the affection of his friend for the full concession of this request. The letter concludes with an intimation of an approaching visit from the apostle, who entertains hopes of his speedy release from (his first) captivity at Rome.
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
The authorship of this profound and beautiful dis- course has been a subject of voluminous discussion. But, with all deference to the learning and ability which have been employed to invalidate the common opinion that assigns it to St. Paul, I confess that nothing on that side has succeeded in rooting out the early sentiment of my mind, that the pen of inspiration which traced these sublime teachings was held by the hand of the great apostle. With no inclination to review this controversy, we may just mention, as apposite to the present work, that the Syrian Fathers, with whom the Epistle to the Hebrews was in high estimation, always considered it to be the production of St. Paul ; and the Peschito, as we see.
SYNOPSIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. IU5
mcluded it in its canon. The early and intimate commu- nication between the churches of Palestine and Syria, "will give a peculiar importance to the views entertained by the latter, both as to the authenticity and authorship of this part of the New Testament.
Addressed at first to the Hebrew Christians in the Holy Land, the treatise might have been written in Ara- maic, and translated subsequently into Greek either by the original author, or by some man of the apostolic school.
To fortify the tried believers of Judea, who were exposed to great temptations from the old associations of their ancestral religion, and from the hatred of their unconverted countiymen to the faith of Jesus, and to obviate as well the prejudices which were hindering many of the Jewish people from embracing the gospel, the apostle, in the dogmatic part of the discourse, shows the divinity of the Christian religion as a mediatorial dispensa- tion of the divine government, to which the merely prepa- ratory system of Judaism was to give place for ever. The old dispensation, ushered in by the ministry of angels, and promulgated by a human mediator, exhibited only a succession of emblematic sacrifices, ofiered by an imper- fect and transient priesthood. But in the new economy we behold the administration of One who is more excel- lent than the angels, being himself the brightness of the glory of the Divine Essence ; a Mediator not merely hu- man, as Moses, who acted only as a servant ; but divine in his nature, and ruling over the house of God as the Son ; a great High Priest, who fulfilled in reality all which the ministrants at the Aaronian altars performed but in symbolic show, and who now saves to the utter- most all who come unto God by him.
1. The glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. lie is the begotten Son of God ; the representation and resplend-
F 5
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ence of his being and perfections ; the Creator, Upholder, and Possessor of the universe ; — yet, the Prophet-Teacher of man, the Propitiation for his sins, his Mediator at the Father's throne.
In referring to the scripture evidence on this all- embracing theme, the writer shows that the personal dignity of Jesus is represented by it as infinitely tran- scending that of the highest orders of created beings. Angels are but ministering spirits ; Jesus is the Son, and declared such by the Father himself, who proclaims the sovereignty in which the Saviour is arrayed both legiti- mate and eternal.
What a celestial greatness, then, belongs to the gospel ! It is in every sense a divine revelation ; for in it the mind of God was spoken to mankind by God himself in the person of his Son ; and, when carried forth to the world by his commissioned ambassadors, was demon- strated by the miraculous manifestations of the Holy Ghost. How then ought we to hear it ? And, if it brings us the sole proffer of salvation, who can escape that neglects it ?
2. Angels are not rulers in the economy of grace, [either in its present stage of developement, or in its future consummation, when the universe is renovated. (Isai. Ixv. 17; 2 Peter iii. 13; Rev. xxi. 1.)] That prerogative is held by Jesus. The objections levelled against his divi- nity by the Jewish unbehevers, as that he was a man, (compare John x. 33 ; v. 18 ; vii. 27,) destitute of secu- lar dominion, (Dan. vii. 13, 14; ii. 44; Mark xv. 31, 32,) and subjected to suffering and death, (John xii. 34,) are shown in this and the following section to be without a basis. From Psalm viii. we are taught that the Mes- siah was to be humbled, as well as constituted the pro- prietor of all. In the history of Jesus they had seen the spectacle of his abasement and the dawning of his media-
SYJ^OPSIB OF THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. 10/
torial glory. Besides, his sufferings were connected in the purpose of God with our salvation, which required a oneness of nature in the Redeemer and the redeemed ; a reality foreshown in the Messianic oracles.
3. He could release us from the dominion of death, only by coming under it ; and for this end he took our nature with its capability of dying. He did not assume the angelic, but the human, nature, with its Hability to temptation and suffering, that he might expiate sin, and be an object of confidence to his people as a merciful and sympathizing High Priest.
The author now reverts to the prophetico-mediatorial office of Jesus as the Apostle, as well as the Priest, of the new dispensation, (the in-bringing of which involved the abolition of that founded by Moses). But, in thus abolishing the old and introducing the new, Jesus had acted with a fidelity like that which Moses displayed in the establishment of the former ; yet with this difference, that the agency of Moses was that of a servitor, himself a member of the great domestic establishment, whose interests he arranged ; while Jesus acted as the Son of God, possessed of the prerogatives of the Creator and Lord of all. They are now reminded of the necessity of apprehending and holding fast their personal interest in the work of Christ by persevering faith. To neglect this, notwithstanding our privileges, is to be reprobated ; for, without respect of persons, the uttered decree of God has excluded the unfaithful from the everlasting rest. In laying this threatening to heart, we see the need there is of being watchful.
4. In reading this section we should keep in mind, (1.) That the natural posterity of Abraham typified the saved people of God. (2.) That Canaan was an emblem of the heavenly inheritance. (3.) The promise of Canaan to Abraham's natural descendants involved and signified
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the guarantee of the better country to his spiritual child- ren ; xctToi liocvoioLv, it was the evangelism of an everlast- ing rest for the church. Accordingly, the apostle here shows, that though such of Israel as believed and obeyed under Joshua had entered on the enjoyment of Canaan, there yet remains another and a better rest for the spiritual Israel, the true people of God ; a rest which is made known and proffered to us through the gospeL But as the unbelievers in the wilderness fell short of Canaan, so the faithless will be excluded from the hea- venly country. These truths enforce the exhortation to vigilance and steadfastness.
In appeaHng to the divine oath which excluded unbe- lievers from the rest of God, he remarks, that it could not refer to the rest of the sabbath, because they were in possession of it already ; the sabbath having been instituted from the creation.
And from the reiteration of the same oath by the Holy Spirit in the time of David, when the natural progeny of Abraham had been long ago introduced by Joshua into the quiet possession of Canaan, he shows that there yet remained a rest for the spiritual Israel, of which the earthly sabbath, and the repose enjoyed in Canaan by Israel after the flesh, were only shadows. This celestial inheritance is enjoyed by the blessed who have ended the toils of probation, and have ascended to the fruition of a repose like that of God.
We are to beware, then, of an incredulity like theirs who fell in the desert, and who could not enter the natural Canaan because of their unbelief. The same state of mind which shut them out from Palestine will exclude us from heaven. Nor are we to forget that our fitness for the great inheritance will be decided by the high requirements of the revealed word, and by a Judge who is omniscient and supreme.
SYNOPSIS OP THE APOSTOLIC EPISTLES. 109
The motives to perseverance are strengthened by recalling and amplifying the truth, (laid down in the first paragraph of the third lesson, chap. ii. 17, &c.,) that in the incarnate Son of God we have a sympathizing Friend and faithful Saviour. We are to lift our eyes to the heavenly places, and, beholding a glorified High Priest alive to the necessities of his people, are to apply to him with the full confidence of faith for the help we continu- ally need.
Our own intimate interest in the subject being thus established, the apostle proceeds to unfold at large the great characteristics of our Lord's priesthood, in the divinity of its origin, its peculiar nature and denomina- tion, its perfection, oneness, effectiveness, and perpetuity ; the doctrinal representations of these magnificent topics continually germinating with soul-awakening suggestions to gratitude, confidence, and fidelity.
General statement on the nature of the sacerdotal office. Application of it to Jesus, who was invested with the priesthood by the decree of the Father. Testimonies. His excellent qualification for it. He entertains a perfect sympathy for the afflicted, having had himself the deep- est experience of mental anguish, physical suff'ering, the terror of death, and the toils of human probation. But, with this indefectible compassion, he possesses an un- bounded power to deliver and to bless. He has been clothed with the divine prerogative to save, and to govern whom he saves. Thus we find in him, in reality, that solitary, supreme, and royal priesthood, which Melchi- sedek of old set forth in transient adumbration.
6. In opening the typical signification of Melchisedek's priesthood, the apostle finds himself at a disadvantage from the inaptitude for such studies in some to whom he was writing. They had not faithfully cultivated the precious knowledge of the truths veiled under many of
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the phenomena described in the Old Testament. He exhorts them to labour after maturity of Christian in- sight. He who makes progress will not recede. Growth in grace and knowledge is necessary to prevent apostasy, from which, when fully reached, there is no return. The backslider is on his way to a fiery end. Yet, of these Hebrews had the apostle good hope ; but it was needful they should be in earnest. How glorious our encourage- ment to perseverance ! The consummate beatification of the faithful is a certainty pledged by the oath of God. This is a supporting principle, the validity of which has been displayed in the entrance into heaven of Jesus our Priest and Representative.
7, 8. From what is made known of the mysterious priest-king of the patriarchal dispensation, — as, that he held a sacerdotal relation to all the worshippers of the most high God, that is, had an universal priesthood ; that he was a royal person, a king as well as priest ; that in the glimpses of him given in scripture he is seen standing alone, in an isolated personality, separated from the rest of men as to race, parentage, or genealogy, exer- cising a sacerdotal function which was independent of lineal qualifications or human authority, and sustained, not for